the painter

1.
Morning comes
the sun closing in on me
Popeye, homeless, smiling, toothless Popeye
rummaging around
the garage

you know what prompts my smile?
Popeye's "get-ge-ge" and the normality of my yelling hello as I run past to catch the bus on time and park in the nursing student

he responds with something about being a whole lot better if he had a kiss from me
oh, the place of paradise
only at the boiler room.

Only at the boiler room does the day begin with
French pressed coffee
DM preparing the day for me with a thermos,
these thoughtful people
only at the boiler room does the day begin with
two woman discussing elephants and heat, God, five page papers
my heart and next month in 40 minutes

This really is a whole place.
Peace is here.
I've found something that really matters
really
not just a temporary fix or something I might move on from next week
I think I always want this kind of life
I don't think
I know
it's paradise

April told me last night. James told me at noon. This place is peace.

Why? God is here. And until the day I die
I will not stop saying that the only place of peace
is the place that God is here.


2.
you got old, Est, you got old
suddenly

re -stapling your students canvas fabric to avoid ripples
critiquing our gesso application
hairs on the back of your neck, very used camel colored shoes
and is this 100% cotton? do you see the shape of that color?
what is the hue, the saturation? the value shift?

Spring break hit and you went to your Mother's to do her taxes
hit up New York for a couple art shows
wore the same shoes

On the weekends you come to school because there is no internet where you live and
no people either

and I've been thinking of how to show you there is more to this life
though the things you say you say very cheerfully and seem to expect the same of us

it has hit me, after watching you
that
God's way really is the most beautiful way, I'm thinking
it's delightful because it isn't a sin that it isn't good for a man to be alone
and you are alone and I can see it

it really is what we want, God and people
because it's the only thing that lasts
some of us just don't find out until we're old like you but
artist's don't get married, right? they ride bikes and wear expensive hair and have this sophisticated poor look about them--it's all part of the liberal independent way of creating
yeah, well,
this one is going to seek after God, not art or poetry or writing or music or expensive hair
she's going to do things differently because I'm learning that what counts for me is not people going oo or ahh
I just want to make the things God puts in my head because in the end it's all that matters
who we become for him and this heart
that is all we will have in the end to offer him and I want it to be tender and beautiful and seperate from people's oo and ahh

it's beautiful that all that doesn't matter. that we are loved as we are without having to put the icing on or the value shift, or the correct hue...

our hands get shaky eventually and what will you do on those dark nights, E?
will you tell yourself over and over that you were a good painter, you were a good painter, you were a good painter?

I could be an terribly good painter too, and it wouldn't matter unless I had
someone to come home to, excited to share it with
or a God to paint for

I feel awful lonely for you and your neck hair and your empty house with it's silence screaming at your ears.

I pray purpose for you.