Poetic License: ‘Poet Sitting with Portrait of Lady Wearing Palm Frond Hat She Wove’
PHOTO PROVIDED
Joe Pacheco
Who will be first to break the pose
As we sit for each other on the lanai,
You with your palms or I with my poem?
Who will give like the artist who poured
Forlorn eternity into your eyes,
Who was the first to break that pose?
Loneliness too deep for smiles to fill,
Hurt too hard for a muse to heal,
You with your palms and I with my poem.
Staring at each other on the lanai,
Cataract implant versus painted eye.
Who will be first to break the pose?
What lies beneath those fronds you wear
And wove into dreams of might-have-been,
You with your palms and I with my poems?
Deadlocked in Art we sit with each other,
Still lives still waiting to burst into life,
You with your palms and I with my poem —
Who will be first to break the pose?