True Art

Nothing.
Empty.
Neither happy nor sad.
No thoughts.
No feelings.
Even the music in your favorite diner
Tom Petty. “Waiting is the Hardest Part.”
does not stir you.
Even if it sings your truth.

A second cup of coffee
might help. The first was invisible.
You sip. Stare into space.
The others in the room think you
either wise or demented.
More likely they do not notice you
and your empty eyes, at all.

There is no past.
There is no future.
And in the moment, you do not exist,
a throwback to worse times,
times of darkness, a black era
suddenly come to visit.
You sip on the second cup.
Van Morrison begins to wail on the stereo.
You look across the room, starting to focus.

There are paintings you painted.
Bright. Yellow. Green.
The colors of spring.
There is a young man at the counter.
he raises his orange juice in a bright toast
to conversations of the heart
we have had in this very corner you now sit in.
You raise your cup,
the flicker of a smile on your lips,
a crack in darkness. Just enough,
you begin to see the curio cabinet of your life
in the morning light,
the beauty and the wounds happily on display,
true art.
It is time, to make more. You are, once again,
saved, ready to feel.
All of it.

About this poem.

A slow morning pushing past the lies of depression. What would I do without reminders of why life is worth living? Music. Art. Relationships. Love.

I am a grateful man.

Tom

PS: The picture was taken at Wilson Castle, a wonderfully decrepit Victorian House in Proctor, VT.