The Lost Arts

You look at the doors in the historic mansion,
realizing the wood is grained, a careful mix
of paint and glaze layered with metal combs,
an itenerate craft from the twenties and thirties
of the last century. A craft you once did
and did well, all but abandoned for the last
coupld of decades as you dove into new arts,
leaving you able to appreciate the work,
but unable, any longer, to duplicate it.

It is not the only thing lost or abandoned
in that time. It has been a long period
of discovery, growth, loss and at times you wonder
what might have come of staying the course,
not learning the new, but staying
with the itenerant art. People make their living
that way, and you might have too.
But that way lies madness.
You have made your choices
and at times have reveled in them; at times
wondered at them. At yourself.

You would think, at this age,
creeping into your seventh decade,
you would be more settled,
and you wonder, as you look at the Vanderbilt doors,
if there is value in going back to the old arts,
and stumble through not being being very good
again.

Because there is value in stumbling into new skills,
new places, new choices. Or stumbing through
the lost arts again. Value in being slightly lost.
It is both wearing and exhilarating, and it reminds you
that you are still alive.

About this poem

I used to do graining, and do it well. But it always triggers thoughts like the ones in the poem when I see it.

The photograph was from the Vanderbilt Mansion in Hyde Park.

Tom