it started timid,
virgin,
not crass,
or violent,
no blindfolds or
pick-up lines
but the erotica of
black-and-white lovers
with their hands first conjoined,
the poem with its honeyed words
and the painting,
bashful,
holding back its oils,
until the poem, emboldened by
a scripted and sensuous need,
lifted the pastel to gaze in wonder at
the canvas underneath,
and the painting,
with quickened breathing,
spreading its colors for the
oncoming stanzas;
and the poem slowly began
its tongue,
forming words of
aesthetic bliss and pleasure--
the rhythm and
the rhymes,
patterns retracing the first brush strokes,
taunting the painting to come forth from its frame;
the painting,
unhooking its clasps,
slipping gracefully from its mat,
stepping forth from the glass,
coyly shaking the dustcovers off its feet,
bending this way and that
to exhibit its carefully drawn landscape
then curling its deckle edges about the poem,
urging the words to melt from the page,
wanting the ink to mingle with its mediums,
-- and the subsequent,
not so spontaneous
but rather sumptuous
combustion of image and word,
wherein the rivers and mountains and
the walking in beauty like
the night, the pretty how town and
the impressions of some
starry night
became one --
and the one,
and the other,
one pointing,
one singing,
now joining,
then collapsing,
and stars,
afterglow and punctuation mark,
both spent as a child's allowance,
whereafter cinema,
their love child,
took its fragile infant form,
gestating from the union of
poem and painting.
