Few are the baby lambs I’ve raised 
or rescued from the brambles.
Yet many are the shepherd’s pies  
I’ve made … one just this afternoon 
though I’ll admit a lump or so remains
to mar the mashed potato crust,
 
which prefigures what I'll say
about my painting teacher Peter, 
who pauses in a song of sharps 
and flats to suggest I draw a form 
resembling neither
worm nor wig, 
barn nor bee.
 
That’s hard, I say. Of course,
it can be done, but not by me. 
 
When I paint, a Thing appears—
Abstract is a lack I have,
an accidental, and the same with poetry.
 
The more I try to do without familiar
metaphor, the more I speak of Grace, 
the grandmother I never met 
but heard about. Her lace gloves, 
tatted by a native nurse,
protected only half her fingers.
so she never brushed the snow  
away from her baby’s face…
ˆ´
The baby was my mother, 
who, in turn,…but
never mind. The rest is lost.