The canvas of life is sometimes painted over
With a very deep and dark coat of color;
Stark and strong, against and covering;
Faded color or paleness of a blank slate.

Framed in darkness, the “work” sits alone;
Placed in the wearisome exile of patience.
Behind closed doors waiting and wondering;
When and with what, suffusion may come?

Moments, minutes, hours and days perhaps years,
The base layer lies in silence and slumber;
As occasional creeping rays of brightness
Slip clandestinely through the door’s rusty jamb;

And enter the night room seeking engagement;
A quiet affair with the dim and the lonesome;
Perhaps lightening the layer that awaits the bristles
That promise a recess from caustic conception.

Then sudden and swiftly the canvas awaken
Finding itself propped on a palette-d easel.
With wonder and disquiet, it looks out at the brightness
That lustfully leans toward and into its skin.

As the smears of yet another coat clothes its darkness
And dresses in fashion its naked past world;
A felt bit of comfort still faint in this new tinge,
Awaiting in want of even more shading.

Yet now a hint of the foolish and fullness
Is felt but not quite clear in distinction.
A hue swells as the layer is pricked with bright pigments
Where does this come from, this birth of fresh stain?

Laughter and love alight on bent brushes
And fleck with a feckless starburst of splendor;
‘Til drying in restlessness the colors abide
And sit with great weight on the dark underneath.

In richness and depth fly these flamboyant tones
That brighten and shine sharply from the night of their soul;
Who’d have thought that the empty and dismal
Could not just support but heighten such thriving?

The colorings of death are indeed the same
As the brilliance and radiance of Love in its life;
The suppleness of dusk offers the collage
That allows the brave blush in exuberance of  Joy!

 

tpt  4/21/2016