In The Art Gallery

A confession -- I'm a frustrated artist. Ever since I was a little girl I've wished I could draw, paint .. anything. I have a very visual imagination, and it irks me to not be able to express and reproduce what I see. But my fine motor skills are rather lacking (to watch me try and thread a needle is pathetic)and I also lack the spatial sense to translate what I see onto paper. I have often said I write poetry because I can't draw what I'm thinking/feeling. So I wrote a poem about that particular frustration (because I can't draw that, either!!!)

Frustration aches my fumbling heart
I bow to beauty as it speaks
Through line and paint of truths that burn:
Thrust into me by their techniques.

These dull, autistic fingers curl
Against my sides – I cannot draw,
I cannot show the things I see
And what else is an artist for?

If I could make the canvas sing
Of mysteries of loveliness:
The supplication of a leaf,
The smile within the wind’s caress,

The mystery of a forest place,
The wild, salt yearning of the sea,
The bashful promise of the dawn,
One face with full humanity:

If I could draw, I would not need
These clumsy words that clunk and fall
To try to catch the starry light
That wraps the darkness like a shawl.

I cannot show, can only tell
Of how the stormlight wracked my soul.
My words are just the skeleton,
Your sight must make the picture whole.