Title, medium, description, artist—
the list matches the photographs;
another list details who gets what
when I’m gone from this world.
There are a few prized paintings
and drawings; there are abstracts,
surrealism, Chinese impressionism,
photographs, seascapes, a Haitian
painting bought from a truck
parked in front of a cafe in Atlanta.
I look at my art every day,
and I see more than just paintings
or drawings—I see the artists:
artists who have died,
artists I’ll never meet,
the photographer whose son—-
now five years gone—
was so dear to me, the artist
who lives down the road
but I never see her,
the kind artist who keeps in touch,
the artist whose colleague broke
my heart, the artist who
no longer speaks to me.
How many stories are hidden
in a painting? How many stories
are added by each of us who sees it?
Which stories do we create,
and which are unconscious pentimento—
always there—waiting for us
to reveal them? Experts tell us to rotate
our art, but I chose each location
on the wall carefully, with intention.
It will all be rotated in time—
the oils and watercolors and pencils
blended with never-ending stories,
with my memories, with the lives
of artists who were compelled,
again and again, to tell the stories
that we all know, the stories
that we will never fully understand.