POEM 11

It stains my heart with colors mimicking life on my little paint boards, not canvas just small hard paper boards. I’ve had these paints for years, drying into softer hues in their bent metal cups.

My brown speckled bird eggs look like they could hatch any minute, but they are only papier-mâché. Made not by me, no. I got them at the art store in a bin filled

With what-nots.

I must have made my way out here for years, sitting in my rickety bamboo chair at this faded oak table, with the peeling white paint. This back porch has been a

Sanctuary for years. It has been rescreened and rescreened and rescreened.. Now I sit with my blocks of paint and the little silk Ivy and fake moss and pipe cleaners,

About to fill a clay pot with some semblance of nature. As my earbuds stream Les Misérables (the British cast) into my brain. I can smell the chalky water colors as my

Interest wanes. I managed to splash a nondescript yellow flower fuzzy with orange specks onto each board. I got lost in time and produced them in a trance.

Somehow I formed these drops of sunshine onto the boards with my eyes in a myopic glaze. I’ll frame them, to hang above kitchen stove.