A canvasboard sketch props up the wall.
Whitened, dull blues, harmonious ochre;
canvas jags glint structured bone
behind blacklined oil contours;
stylized nose, check mark and curlicue.

She saw fit to square the shoulders
boxlike, crooked arm in mid-strum,
one gargantuan visible ear listening,
jawline taut with an arrogant
forty-cig-a-day metabolism.

Too bad she could paint. I'd rather
those years were wrapped and sealed
in a tidy compressed package,
a silent kernel lying in wait
for the octogenarian rebound,
not embalmed in this blue-orange memento.
But there it leans, lovely, bushwhacked,
poised to confuse the kids.

1999