Anything on the Outside

At times, you do it for yourself.
Paint as if no one else will see it.
Write as if there are no readers.
It is not exactly as free – at times you are your own worst critic.
Not as free but there is a certain satisfaction
in not caring, a satisfaction that comes more and more
with age, when you slowly discover less matters
than you thought it did, and peace is more valuable
than anything on the outside.

About this poem

About aging. About art and words and love and all the good stuff that gets better with age. Poetry is never about one thing.

The photograph is of my first studip. A room in my house. There was such joy in the painting then. And as I close in on getting my third (and much larger studio together, there will be that joy again. Not because of the studio but just to have a place where the world expects nothing of me, and I can paint my heart.

Tom