Life in Color

I was once a Monet:
All soft and loose around the edges,
A still pond reflecting
    and dissolving colors of afternoon picnics
As elegiac as a Cather novel.

When the boy falls down
the blood is too red;
Tears spring to my eyes as
I grab at my own knee.

     **************

Now a Vanmeer, crystal clear
Recalling light the eye cannot see:
The shiny black of cockroach carapaces,
The primal red of childbirth,
A camera obscura, with the image upside down.

When the boy falls,
I am first on the scene
For I know no one else will come.

      ******************

Pushed and punished, flattened and greyed,
I am a Picasso of triangle tongues and disembodied limbs
An ache of winter and broken promises.
Two eyes peer out but cannot see

So when the boy falls down
I cannot hear
him over my own lament.

      ****************

Warhol at last, all candy-colored shine,
Carbon-copy gestures in all the right postures
As still as life inside
While seasons kalaidescope beyond.

The boy falls.
We watch with dead eyes
And smile still.