Unpainted Valentine (for Elizabeth)

After forty years of watching
those painting shows on TV
just for a little amusement
where always the same cadmium yellow
sunset is being brushed in by the same
old man’s hand how can that be
I took up painting
for weeks I’d been haunted
by a pair of gray celadon eyes
I tried to hold on to
not from lust but amazement
at the sheer achievement
of those pearls yellow blue green
laid down in thin lines
around lacquered black
expanding centers
and I wanted to paint them
but for my first masterpiece
to warm up as it were
I tried to sketch in abstract
what true social renewal
would look like in chalk
on Japanese paper almost
in the form of a school girl
if the bomb hadn’t fallen
stretching out her hand
vaguely held up by a blue
hydrangea because I hadn’t
mentally practiced
my brush strokes nearly
enough for eyes yet.