The Master’s Hand/ You...Drawing...Me!

THE MASTER’S HAND I ring you up to see if you are seeing Monet painting in slow motion our voices joined across the phone we both now watching this same forgotten footage our eyes glued to the flickering screen each in our separate rooms across the distance of this dark night. The master’s hand moves like a swan making decisions...changing its mind an actor’s voiceover speaking Monet’s mind as he too once watched this moving image of him & his hand: “Poor hand...not knowing where to go to next what step…to take! ” Our hearts like Monet’s hand holding the unspoken secret of our untold love this seeing separately together our first veiled declaration of what could be watching Monet’s moving hand move us both of us not knowing what to do next but both of us knowing that this is us. At the other end of the phone our tears ... invisible. ******* YOU...DRAWING...ME Your hand trembles before the page as if afraid & then plunges in swimming into the whiteness marks appear out of nowhere as if they chased away the invading intruder the hand held now paused above the page stranded in mid-air amazed at the face that stares back up at it as if asking itself: “Did I do that? ” The ghost of a face emerges from the charcoal as if from a mist its lines claiming to be more me than me my self as if it had caught the very essence of my soul trapped now within this page (it’s endless whiteness) knowing there is no escape. *******