Found

What does it mean

To make a painting

Adolescent hands

Applied brush to every surface

I could scrounge

Cheap paint, chalky and chunky

Awestruck by their potential

Art school crushes internal freedom

With merciless technique

Though hard-won skills emerged

Prepared to be utilized

My hands ready

For expression

Cruel irony, to be left bereft

For twenty years

Creative mind vacuous

Seven months ago

I came back to canvas

To paint a silly dog

Not too terribly rendered

(She died two weeks later)

Perhaps a portent

Of things inaccessible

Then another silly dog

Less successful

Still alive, thank the gods

A landscape attempt

Oversaturated, impuissant

(Pen liked her Christmas gift anyway)

Next, I tried my hand

At illuminating darkness

For the first time

Dostoevsky lit the literary flame

Inside my heart

Rendered with care

Though my artist’s breath

Hoarse from disuse

Sung notes of hesitant colour

Best as I could

Last night, standing before black canvas

Trailing colour across plane

To sketch a rough outline

Foliage and hummingbird

Simply for myself

No expectations

Writing poems

Opened this old door

Dusty and cobwebbed

Oiling the hinges

Primed by derpy dogs

And one great story

Perhaps it will be well-crafted

Or not

It doesn’t matter

Heart’s truth regained

Once again

Home for good