She is not conflicted youth
Nor is she wisdom's solace
She is not untroubled virtue
Nor aloof neglect
She is not the condemned's justice
Or the penitent's salvation
She is not barricaded faith
Nor is she candlelit belief
She is not invisible
Although she is unseen
She is not pity's allurement
Nor is she pride, unshamed
She is but a cold gravestone's
Crumbled, abandoned name.
8/09/19
The painting's old and weather-worn beyond a time
I'd never know, and dust-lined
and bold. But still it's crude
how the oil paint collides with aging lines in an age-old taboo.
And daring me to find
a part too daring in something named divine,
and vivid in it's truth or steadfast with its lies.
A shameless sharing of life
that spreads a reality in color-sewn light
that's told her she's promiscuos, she's been kept in strife
to the old shadows of the night.
But here she is after all this time, a smile for all as she takes flight
unchanged. She's not aged
with the passage of judgement, and unshamed.
She stands erect, bare-chested and sure of her right
to be what she is. A woman that lived
with her quiet resistance. She lived to give
her quiet echo through the distance.
And now her pride could match a man's,
as she bears her breast and strokes her violin.
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