What an Artist Knows

This was one of the first poems I wrote.  It was on the occasion of my wife's 50th  birthday which we celebrated with friends in grand style at the Cafe des Artistes.  (It was back in the days when we still had money to burn.)

Tonight we'll be celebrating again (happily enough with both new and old friends) on the occasion of the Suffolk Arts Center's new exhibit where 3 of Marissa's orchid paintings will be on display.  So I thought it would be a good idea to dig out the old poem, dust it off and see if I could refurbish it in light of new facts and circumstances of our lives.  Usually I don't like to rewrite older poems but this one is slightly different because I knew at the time I first wrote it that I hadn't gotten it quite right.  More than that, love and marriage is certainly best understood as a perpetual work in progress so it is in that spirit that I offer up these revisions.


 
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What an Artist Knows 

              

                               for Marissa

 

What an artist knows
She knows in the flesh
With each turn of her wrist
Each inspiration and breath
She iterates space
With a knowing caress

Eyes open or closed
There’s joy in her bones
Or the sudden most sorrow
May stipple her marrow
So that come what tomorrow
The surer her vision grows

As with the tip of a brush
She enraptures the rose
And captures swift life
As it ebbs and it flows
Through all the harmonics
Of laughter and shade

Until by means
Still more enigmatic

From garden to pallet

She learns to transcribe
The orchid’s tuneful lyric
Onto the petals strewn

Beside and below

Restoring us into
Intimate contact

With beauty in its

Timeline aspect

Of the radiance that endures

Even as each blossom

Comes and goes

 

* * * * * *

Marissa Bridge from The Journey #22

This is one of the paintings from Marissa's new series called The Journey which chronicles the life cycle of an orchid in in bloom.  You can see more of these incredible images on her website here.


(You can also read the earlier version my poem here.)