When at last… my big mouth…

when at last you were able
to paint heaven
black and vast with clustered stars
like fingerprints
you drew a faint line in sea foam
across your horizons and your tides

when at last
you remembered
something of the soul’s colour
and how we are all translucent in daylight
without the pigments of love to deify us
resurrect us in our sleep

when at last
you laid out the landscape
of what you had lost
textured it with impasto
hued with shadow a dying face’s
pin-prick highlights on the edge
of hard-etched lines trajectories
memory and grief

…and my big mouth
     stole the moment with artful talk
          nearly stole all of it
               for fear of a silence
I failed to comprehend

when at last
you explained how
the forms of sea and air or rivers
wind into topography even as you map it
how they become the heart’s blood described
by the relentless energy of its beating
and earth water air fire itself
elements of a desire to explain
the inexplicable

when at last…

…my big mouth fell open fell idle
squandered its words
     (for these are
          my blessing and my curse
               my aching need to qualify
                    my fear of silence
                         my being silent)
it would have been
as if I had explained enough
and you not nearly enough
and that in itself
explained too much…

…and my big mouth.

© BH, 2018

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Someone talks about art, about their work and you hijack the conversation, talk about yourself. 

Sense of deep regret, recrimination, afterwards. 

Note to self, must do better.

Here’s hoping.