July 14, 2015

art before breakfast

To rise and shuffle dim-eyed to the kitchen, reach a clumsy thumb
toward the crucial button at the base of a coffee maker, stand ruffled
and nonverbal as the slow drip accumulates into a single cupful -
I know of no clearer instinct than this. Lilac blossoms are flirting 
from the yard, blades of grass are winking with dew, a zucchini sprawls,
tumescent, in the back garden. A guitar is reclining on the porch, its slim neck
dipping a small curve into a cushion. A pad of smooth blank paper flutters
in the studio; a chorus of paint is surely tuning up. Beauty, like a lion,
lies waiting in the weeds as I, unseeing, take swallows from the stream,
briefly innocent to what will come when I turn to ravage it all.