LISTEN TO THE PAINTING

Who’da thought life’s rhythms
could be caught on burlap best,
When all along words were
the universal test?
The first of them was God’s,
who described life’s essence,
for everybody to wonder about,
in languages too numerous to ponder.
So we speak, write, and search,
and sometimes pray in church,
to find the right words for our spirit,
so we won’t be left in the lurch.
There is enough music and poems,
with their cadence and pace,
all trying to echo the rhythms of the universe,
but do we hear breaths and heartbeats,
that come and go to and fro?
We can by listening to paintings and pictures
of long ago.
Painters’ who strive for sensations, not reverent thoughts,
in a portrait, landscape, or a seascape of force.
When viewed in silence by all who can see,
these paintings can talk to you and me.
And we can look backwards to touch,
that long ago soul who gave us so much,
whose presence we can still feel,
reaching for our minds,
If we look and see, listen and hear,
the painting’s haunting rhymes.