After the exhibition

Leaving the Levers

I could have lingered longer, spun a stronger
bond with fertile space which prints and paintings
silently watched over, drunk far deeper,
slid a steeper helix to dimensions
never charted between mounting board
and wall, stepped through frames into the ether,
tried to tune my ear to colour, taken
steps to learn eye’s language. But what use
the helter-skelter of a poetaster’s
patterns when the paintbrush and the cyan
have said all we need to hear? In some realm
I cannot visit, next to Hildegard’s rich chantry,
the full harmony of meaning learned from
forty years of making – forty years
of living, delving, forty years of loving
sharing – is now sounding in the sanctum.