Portrait In The Landscape Of Emotion Poem by Sonny Rainshine

Where is the fear in your face?
Is it ensconced in the crease
beneath your right eye, or in that trace
of blue in the Matisse

you bought on your holiday in France,
that lonely blue period in your life
when you felt exploited by circumstance
and when you lost your wife.

I wonder if fear, or love, or joy
become fixated in our flesh
or do we destroy
these feelings and start fresh

every time we weep
or thrash about in anger.
Can we sweep
away danger

like lint on our coats
leaving behind no debris,
or does it take umbrage in our throats,
an unarticulated plea?

I’d say if you look hard in every case,
you can see the fear and strain
there in every face,
secreted behind the pain.