With full knowledge
of its weight, made heavy
By its gilded frame,
Requiring strong wire
Thick nails, to secure it
In place—level—solid
Upon a wall of plaster
Chipped, repainted in layers
Colors upon colors thick.
We used our steady eye
A skill, a tool, to drive
Guided anchors into
The unstable surface
Occasionally…….. the painting
tilted—lay crooked—off-center.
We would straighten it
With a measuring eye……..
The very eye that notices
The sun to see, to detect
Slow dust movement settling
Made up of our combined skin
Dancing in beams that hit
The painting at angles………..
Pieced together, faster than belief
Into joined frozen images
There…
We began to recognize patterns
These patterns are reflections
Of the painting itself………
So heavy upon a fragile wall
(above postcard by Leo, 1920)
(To see how a poem is constructed, click here)
I clicked the link and was nearly lost in the cleverness of the final piece. Brilliantly I wasn’t lost, your fine words rang out.
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A garage sale? Really? I was reading something entirely different into this, like, how a particularly heavy work of art would require care and calculation in the hanging. Eyeballing it seemed a bit cavalier for a gallery, but… who knew it was you, hanging a piece on your own wall? Thanks for sharing the inside info and earlier drafts, showing us how you shaped what the Muses handed you. 🙂
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It is interesting how things morph. I wonder how many poems we know started somewhere else?
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What a poem, Elan. ♥
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You’ve captured something and captured a moment as well.
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Excellent!
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I love the way you mold the mundane into something new and fresh as if we are seeing the dusty painting for the first time. 🙂
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