[ If I were a painter I’d paint you in colors ]

If I were a painter I’d paint you in colors
Of emerald and olive and amaranth-red,
Agleam in the beam of the skies of lost summers
Which swirl and uncurl in the stars overhead.

If I were a sculptor, I’d carve you from marble
In permanent beauty eleven feet tall
And amblers who happened upon you would marvel,
“How lifelike her features! How fragile her shawl!”

Were I a composer, I’d write you tranquillo,
A suite in E Minor for oboe and flute
That bends in the supple-soft dance of the willow
With delicate branches and adamant root.

I touch not these talents, and well do I know it,
Possessing few skills of the proud and sublime,
Yet I am a poet (though barely a poet)
And therefore must love you in meter and rhyme.

Pray, pity the poet, for only the poet
Pays homage with offerings as feeble as mine.

© 2021 Thain Emrys Bertin
Public Domain Image