Write Better Poetry's prompts have been a bit late these past few days, (allegedly due to working the kinks out of a new platform) so I did NaPoWriMo's prompt first: "Write [a] poem about living with a piece of art." (I'll probably be back later with a poem in response to the other prompt.)
Painting of My House Inside My House
My friend Bob has become a “retirement painter,”
which is in no way a put-down.
He’s always been interested in taking up the brush,
but with time on his hands, he got more serious,
and his skills blossomed.
A realist with a dab of impressionism,
he stealthily studied our house from his car
one day, and went home to complete the job,
built it from the ground up with oils,
and presented the framed work as a surprise.
He rendered our modest white Cape Cod faithfully,
though he tweaked the curb appeal:
dotting our flower bed with more daffodils
than I think we had, and trimming my rhododendron
more neatly than it really was. Also, he said,
he couldn’t quite get the retaining wall to work,
the one fronting our lawn, so he deleted it.
Artistic license is like poetic license—
if you embellish the truth, it’s still basically the truth.
Now we admire it on the dining room wall,
but I can’t help but think of a variation
of that old multiverse paradox:
Is there a painting on the dining room wall
inside this painting of my house,
and is my house just a painting
on someone else’s wall?
And did Bob paint it?
My friend Bob has become a “retirement painter,”
which is in no way a put-down.
He’s always been interested in taking up the brush,
but with time on his hands, he got more serious,
and his skills blossomed.
he stealthily studied our house from his car
one day, and went home to complete the job,
built it from the ground up with oils,
and presented the framed work as a surprise.
He rendered our modest white Cape Cod faithfully,
though he tweaked the curb appeal:
dotting our flower bed with more daffodils
than I think we had, and trimming my rhododendron
more neatly than it really was. Also, he said,
he couldn’t quite get the retaining wall to work,
the one fronting our lawn, so he deleted it.
Artistic license is like poetic license—
if you embellish the truth, it’s still basically the truth.
but I can’t help but think of a variation
of that old multiverse paradox:
Is there a painting on the dining room wall
inside this painting of my house,
and is my house just a painting
on someone else’s wall?
And did Bob paint it?
(Painting by Bob Rogers, 2022.)
P.S.: Here is my response to the Write Better poetry prompt, which is to write an "unexpected mess" poem. I thought of adding soomething to the first poem so it would satisfy both prompts, but I liked this idea better as a separate poem.
The Mess Inside
He paints a picture of their house—
a neat little starch-white bungalow
with perfectly pruned hedges
and a garden with rows of flowers.
If only he had painted the inside—
immaculate rooms that belie
closets full of chaos
behind the thin doors of order.
a neat little starch-white bungalow
with perfectly pruned hedges
and a garden with rows of flowers.
immaculate rooms that belie
closets full of chaos
behind the thin doors of order.
2 comments:
Sorry so delayed. I'm one of four featured poets at a poetry festival. Very busy day. Hey, that's cool that the second prompt worked out to allow you to write about the same thing. Both very good poems!
Oh! I liked the multiverse "inside inside inside" thing!
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