Purses at the Market

The purses hang at the farmer’s market,
bright and colorful, each one hand made,
each one unique, beautiful things you have no use for,
but gaze at for perhaps a bit too long,
letting the vibrancy fill your vision,
letting the ebullience push out your inner winter
and leave you twenty again,
innocent and free of baggage,  or triggers,
free of the mistakes that have piled up like so many weights.

The purses hang at the farmer’s market.
You don’t stare as much as meld,
letting the patterns feed your joy,
fill your parched soul, that tattered thing,
dry as dust, hungry for color, unknowingly
hungry for that lost innocence.
You are no longer seeing.
No, it is something more, feeling, rising,
oh yes, you remember now,
living.

About this poem.

Too much going on here to write a pithy “about” section. Some of it has to do with age. Some of it has to do with the woman I love and all the color she has brought to my life. Some of it has to to with growing older. Some of it has to do with a talk I have to give later this month on “How to Look at Abstract Art.” Some of it I am still sorting out. Most of it, I am still sorting out.

But that’s why I write poetry most of the time, to sort things out.

Tom