Walking lonely shores, I wonder how I could have found it so desolate at one time. With searing sun burning skin and grass and trees, then rain as gray and cold as death, how could I have been so blind? With salty ocean tears rusting and destroying all in their path, then spiky shells as sharp as razor blades drawing blood in the sand, how could I have been so foolish? With barren land awash with clay, cracking in the summer’s heat, then strangling vines and broken trees and fetid swamps, how could I have been so frightened?
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| The Artist's brush . . . |
My youth was misspent in pursuing glimpses of brilliant
flowers and fairy castles, searching for the sweetest fruits; in vainly
commanding my environment, to the detriment of my soul; in wandering in search
of beauty, blinded by my own inexperience and lack of knowledge. My eyes saw nothing but what my pride told
them to seek; and shunned the discarded feathers of the free and tired bird.
But the Artist paints me still, and sky and sea and land,
with a brush much older, much used, and now much loved, at last. Stroking brilliant colors or bland and grey
and terrible; it matters not. The beauty
is divinely given, equal portions to all (or not), known only to the few. The patterns in the sky match the many roads
my soul has taken, grateful at last for a pittance, tasting as sweet as the
most delicate of fruits. Indeed, much
sweeter for the hard and weary earning.
How could I have been so blind? My eyes were not old enough, but when they finally
ripened, my heart and soul leapt on to the canvas of the Artist, still wet and
changing, dripping into fairy castles, and blended with the many colors there,
home at last, a part of the precious painted linen.
