I watched the turquoise pastel
melt between your fingerpads;
how later you flayed
the waxen surface back
to the sunflower patch
of a forethought, your
instrument an upturned
brush, flaked to the grain -
the fusty sugar paper buckled.
You upended everything,
always careless of things:
finest sables splayed
under their own weight,
weeks forgotten - to emerge
gunged, from the silted
floor of a chemical jamjar.
I tidied, like a verger
or prefect, purging
with the stream from the oil-
fingered tap. Stop,
you said, printing
my elbow with a rusty index,
pointing past an ancient
meal's craquelured dish
to the oyster-crust
at the edge of an unscraped palette -
chewy rainbow, blistered jewels.
-- 'A Painting' by Sarah Howe #VerseThursday#TodaysPoem#poetry@poetry
