August 4, 2001
(I was 56)
Never
Again
Upon hearing that Senator Tom Daschle’s father
lost a lifetime of his paintings in a fire.
Never again.
The force that loaded hues
from the palette
then carried the brush
across the vision to the canvas
was gone.
The rightness of the stroke
applied in unconscious
confidence
to make the unseen visible,
lost in a moment’s
speculative hesitation.
The fire consumed the
house.
The first thought after the
panic,
“Everyone’s alive,”
was not quite true.
A hundred creations that
counted the years
of gifts of self to the
self
were reduced to funereal
ash.
“Only things,” the brave
perspective
offered to others measuring
their losses.
But hesitation grew from
speculation
of impermanence to
indifference
for gifts to the self of
the self.
The fire consumed the
house.
Never again color brushed
against vision;
everyone alive, only things.
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