October 2017
Martin Willitts Jr
mwillitts01@yahoo.com
mwillitts01@yahoo.com
When I was a child, I lived in a city and visited my grandparents’ Mennonite farm. I would go from electricity to none, from school work to hard farm labor using hand plows, from flush toilets to three-seater outhouses. I never had my feet in one world or the other. I still work on community builds, and I tutor ESL students. In between, I write poetry like the possessed. And, maybe I am possessed.
The Painter
Instinct was taking him to the green meadow
to notice the aphids on the purple lupines
near the copper-colored trees.
He hadn’t been there in a long time.
He brought paintbrushes, large stretched canvas,
assorted tubes of paint, gray shifts of wind.
What could he say about silence
he had not already said before, countless times?
He wanted to move through the twitching grass.
What about the pallor light? The swallowed sky?
What could he say new about the cartilage of promises?
What about the invisible that holds the world together?
At this time of the year, the air would be chirring.
What could he do to describe what cannot be said?
Something that wouldn’t ultimately disappoint the eye.
He wanted colors sending grappling hooks into a heart.
He would place these sounds into the canvas:
the sighing grass; the goldenrod spreading its discomforts;
the thrum of black insects winding-up their pitch --
those noises defying silence even Beethoven could hear.
The Painter
Instinct was taking him to the green meadow
to notice the aphids on the purple lupines
near the copper-colored trees.
He hadn’t been there in a long time.
He brought paintbrushes, large stretched canvas,
assorted tubes of paint, gray shifts of wind.
What could he say about silence
he had not already said before, countless times?
He wanted to move through the twitching grass.
What about the pallor light? The swallowed sky?
What could he say new about the cartilage of promises?
What about the invisible that holds the world together?
At this time of the year, the air would be chirring.
What could he do to describe what cannot be said?
Something that wouldn’t ultimately disappoint the eye.
He wanted colors sending grappling hooks into a heart.
He would place these sounds into the canvas:
the sighing grass; the goldenrod spreading its discomforts;
the thrum of black insects winding-up their pitch --
those noises defying silence even Beethoven could hear.
© 2017 Martin Willitts Jr
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