Tale of a Missing Painting (with abstract paintbrushes)

A paintbrush glides, then drifts, drifts, slowly, slowly
unobtrusively, in dead leaf, to the ground of the canvas
and of its passage remains, faint, faint, a season gone
in yellow, dark, verging the gold, tarnished, of days of sun grown old.

Then it follows, follows to the side, drops to the west
and splashes a sea, in a languid, limpid spray of blue
diluted in deep, very deep green, but the waves it makes
come to spread on no shore, as they rise and they foam
on a corner of pink, so high in the canvas that it catches a wing
floating by in the colourless but expansive sky.

And now it quivers, between diving and soaring
between dawn and a cloud that peeks from beneath
a dot, very clear, very cold, of what could be a moon
or a rainy beam warning, moistly, succinctly, of a falling night.

But then, the course changes and the paintbrush rolls, rolls
to the very center, in all shades of warmth with a glow of skin.

There, it finds no one
nor model, nor artist, just the painting itself
escaping the sense and no longer there.

In the distance, a silhouette, half woman, half bird
leaves a nude imprint in the shape of a soul
white, white, unseen, on the white wall
just before the paintbrush and what it never, ever
could capture, soar through a window, recently opened
in another canvas… and disappear.

Later, in the studio, the artist wonders
wonders… how is it possible to still miss that painting
and yet… how can one, possibly, not.

Then, abstract, so abstract, the artist sits down
by the missing painting, new paintbrush in hand;
A glance at the window in the other canvas
and the paintbrush closes it, while the artist sighs
and in round, transparent, bereft drops of longing, begins
to cry.

© 2005 Alexandra* ~ OneLight*® Authors & Creations