UNFINISHED

“It’s a still life,” she explained,

arms fluttering over the canvas

like a nervous child’s eyelashes,

head at a curious tilt

evaluating the onions and apples

cloistered in a basket, seething

in hues of lemon and wheat,

the brackish tones of a reflective

Indiana twilight.

A month later the canvas

remains unfinished, propped up

on its easel like a forgotten heirloom,

the onions and apples yet undefined

and artlessly flat in execution, any

hope for their refinement lost.

Every color on her palette

has hardened, the oils dried and soaked

into permanency into the canvas,

brushes leaning tipsily

in a soup can of turpentine.

Her artistic vision, yet unpolished,

will remain so, the painter’s eyes

shuttered from the light, although

her vision was disquietingly prescient,

for the painting truly has become

a still life.