Finger Painting

Before he could draw his mind da Vinci made cathedrals with his fingers. We once built an adobe hut in New Mexico, I was surprised how alike it was to a poem taking shape. When it was done, we pressed our hands and fingers into the still wet mud walls. The last rays of the evening sun turned those hand-prints into gilded gold. It was then that we knew we were Adam and Eve and there was nothing yet but us until the world would arrive like an old painting out of nowhere. A world bloodstained and crazy enough to build helicopters or a Mona Lisa, a bowl of fruit, or an adobe house in the desert. That world had countless fingers shaped from pure energy. Together we formed a God out of sticks and stones, a rough idol that was holy for a while. We kept it on a shelf above a small fireplace. Often the flickering shadows of the flames resembled the nimble fingers of an artist at work.