Friday, April 4, 2025

4/4/25: living with paint

 Day 4 prompt is here. In keeping with the idea of sharing poems (disclosure: this is something I am borrowing from the same place where I get my prompts [link above]), I'm going to try and link a poem from someone else each day too. Today, I want to share a poem I read yesterday from Rook.

when i was a child, we'd say the "our father" prayer at night. "our father, who art in heaven".
i imagined god as a french painter. beret. full black beard. off-white smock. smile of concentration. sitting and painting a globe in broad strokes;
painting the world where i lived. was i too be part of his canvas? also, if the art was in heaven,
was the world not in on the act?
 

god was a painter and i was unsure if i was part of the masterpiece or just a discarded palette of spent paint.

little did i know, art was a verb, but not an action. i can't art (oh, but how hard i try), maybe god could though. god was in heaven. i was on earth. two bills, one show?

was he still painting? was he ever? did he have a beard?

are we all just paint
waiting to be painted?

2 comments:

  1. I love the way you let us see through the eyes of you as a child in your poem, Leonard, and I can see God as a French painter too, especially with that smile of concentration. I also love the uncertainty about being ‘part of the masterpiece or just a discarded palette of spent paint’.

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  2. Perhaps we are poems waiting to be written. (Or songs waiting to be sung. Or ...)

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