An Experiment

written for Poets United


In the days - not far back - while painting from life
(the subject, of course, one loaded with feeling),
I'd sometimes compose at the back of mind,
a poem that rhymed. The task was to sever
the picture before me from all conscious thought.

The very next day I would study them both,
much as a poacher might study his traps.
Mostly I'd find that the poems were slight,
at times rather silly and trivial things.
Not so the paintings: they'd have the power
to surprise me well, more significant somehow,
than I might have foreseen in my rosiest dream.
From this I concluded that a poem requires
the whole of the mind, that the poet must bring
all the manners of thinking, all his riches to bear.

Not so the paintings, those autonomous things,
left to themselves - they preferred it that way -
they thrived in the knowing they were not observed
when consciousness left them alone. Ignored
by logic, they went out on the town,
free as the birds to manage themselves.

They and the poems strolled out hand-in-hand.
The latter I owned, each one a child,
the paintings were different: untrammelled and wild.
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The task this week was to use the two pairs of words: trivial/significant and observe/ignore