Life’s Canvass Poem by Daleen Enslinstrydom

Don’t we all paint
With the paintbrush of life
On our own canvasses every day?

Sometimes we paint beautiful landscapes
With wonderful colours that break
Into lovely sunsets
And at times we paint stormy seas
With dark greys and patches of pitch black

And with emotions that are empty
We do all leave prints of our lives
For everybody to see
As if we do make duplicates
Of all that we do experience and behold.

Colours are mixed with emotions
And fear and disarray.
Sometimes we dip our brushes
Into open wounds that do not heal
And we paint everything
In a scarlet red

And our lives become
Very dreary and macabre
And then when the sun breaks through
The days of darkness
We paint happiness, stars
And pretty butterflies
And we paint our children’s faces
On our hearts

And the world becomes
A still-life
And every day we leave
Our portraits everywhere.

Sometimes we do just leave them
To gather dust
As at times we do just give up on life.

Every day is a new challenge
And every person does get to pick up
His or her paintbrush yet again
And try to paint something
With an everlasting memory.