Now you have to make some almighty decisions. Never easy
as you make it look, Bob, slicing rolls of paint,
beating color into the brush—burnt umber, cadmium
yellow, thalo blue. You drag your knife against the mountain,
spreading snow like a minor god, balancing light and dark
against the emerald treeline. I need a life coach, Bob.
Dust gathers. Dishes rise. I’ve been collecting fusty, impossible
words like wafers under my tongue—panicle, tussock, rosinweed.
Your brush hesitates over the canvas, tips of evergreens
not yet born. Maybe you can live right here. Move mountains,
bend rivers. You speak from beyond the grave—This canvas
is your world to make. I’ve tried, swirling liturgies of crayon,
paper torn, throat burning. Infinite possibilities. Think like water.
Let it flow. I’m tired, Bob. Let water think like me for once.
Just once, could you paint a smokestack or a strip club, neon pink
smudging the coal town’s poisoned river? I can’t hide
in your winter forest. I live in the world my parents made,
and my grandparents, all the way back to the first
black stone chipped into a blade, the first seed planted
on purpose, the first engine spark that set the Cuyahoga burning.
Thanks to Midwestern Gothic, where this poem first appeared.
Sarah Burke 