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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