by Yvette Stubbs
Dusty ant hills of once vibrant oil paint
His easel, a padded chair
His last painting a man on a ski slope, that barely changed that year
This painting will always be his canvased unfinished symphony
Two dusty piano lids, not lifted for months
Holding photos of past days, whose population asks me for explanation
As the phone rings incessantly
I look down, glimpse my dad’s hands, on my wrists, his gene pool
I touched his hands in the hospital to calm him
Nurse scrubbed crinkled skin, his long fingernails like mine
Blood dripping on white sheet
From multiple puncture wounds and too much
anti coagulant drug and anesthetic that finished him off
Cluttering his liver with foreign poisons
Filling his lungs with liquid he would drown in
Your great grandson Tyson, never stops painting
He doesn’t care that his father is a mechanic, as your father was a blacksmith
Your granddaughter, little Capricorn Sienna, draws as though she’s breathing it, she draws her pain out and her joy to her
And art is the life blood of your children, who remember you
Each time they speak, each time they see, each time they create.
You were a decent man, untouched by the corruption of experience
And you always knew, you would live on in us and in your paintings.