A Painter

I am not alone,

For I am with God.

Sometimes I enter

A wordless place,

A place where I make art;

Colors swirling

From the tip of my brush

That coats and scratches

At a two dimensional canvas.

But, I am anything 

But two dimensional

In this place…

Women with missing heads and limbs,

Windows that seem to lead to nowhere,

Swirls, trees,  in thick layers of acrylic color,

Slowly, sometimes quickly,

Showing the way.

I was lost here,

And found here,

For over a decade.

Then one day, I found words again.

The pictures left me.

In the beginning, 

My writing was juvenile,

And over the years 

I slowly developed my craft.

It has been seven years now;

In this time,

I wrote a few dozen poems,

Some beautiful, some disturbing.

I painfully crafted a few fiction tales,

And wrote hundreds of blog essays

All for the purpose

Of finding my deeper self.

Stillness, within the confines of language.

When I look at my art,

It seems like a lifetime ago.

When I am without God,

I see futility and child-like colors.

But Emily Moon,

Elma, Emma,

is in there,

Inside of the painting;

Beyond grief

Beyond sanity

Bearing my soul in fruitful colors

For all to see.

They are visions, 

Revelations, beginnings, and stories,

Of the past and the future,

Stacked upon eachother,

In the Pole barn.

My Father came by the other day,

And took many paintings,

To hang on the walls of his home.

He remembers and sees,

What I barely see.

All I know, is in the layers of paint,

On the multitude of canvasses,

Are dollars. American dollars;

The blood sweat and toil

Of my partner…

Painting is not cheap.

Painting saved me.

When I was young, I wrote,

But, not as I do now.

What I truly craved, 

Was the wet sloppy brush 

Upon the backdrop

Of a surface; 

Sometimes wood

Sometimes canvas,

On Sale at Michaels. 

I knew love.

Just one of the many ways 

My husband has shown me love;

Art supplies, earrings, gardening supplies, nice meals.

Endless love.

That shoulder for my tears,

That thick skin when I erupt

Out of my wordless state,

Into tears wretched,

And anger profound.

Today, I am grateful. 

So, so grateful to have found words…

Or have they found me?

God is supernatural in this way.