UNDERSTANDING, LACKING

Words like birds fly over my head.
The dense fog which is my brain
cannot comprehend the language of
the cosmos.

Bright star-given expressions flow
and pour out through brilliant poets.
Mythological references
abandon me.

The gods laugh at my ignorance.
Only one preferred poet from
centuries past, soothes and strokes
me with his words.

I am not an observer of masters
of the written word.
My muse is paint and pigment and
one hundred forty pound paper.

But my fingers are stiff from
forty five years of holding a brush.
My neck is tired from leaning for hours on end.
My passionate chapter is coming to a close.

My poetry emerges as a painting.
It comes from art and life.
My words are from me, but no
study or reference lies behind them.