An Artist's Ribbon 3a Poem by Judith Vriesema

'So you think..
sometimes in the small of a long still night at 3 am when the world is still and pine trees hesitate to breathe while snow comforts the seedlings of spring that are sleeping beneath a hibernating earth always dreaming of the smell of rain-laden earth; you think and feel you are the only being awake in that metaphysical magician show's hour.. that love walks through doorways to the soul and a hesitation of comedic relief echoes through phone lines thousands of miles away to find itself standing naked without the baubles of material want to find what kant never found..or in your case nieztsche...the beginning before voice, before sound...a shimmer in the woods, 'the artist reflected aloud in a studio marked by the white of walls and coldness of flourescent light.
Her wine glass simmered in an amber light; a light that was a contradiction to the whiteness of her studio.
Long winds blew in from the sea and from winter-bound mountains to cradle valleys in snow drifts and star-laden frozen ponds. She stared at the blackness of her window that held no reflection as the clock ticked away at 3 am. Ah, this is the magical hour, the hour when all dreamers awaken to climb the staircase of a philosopher's mind. Where do dreamers go when ghosts circumvent reality and whisper tales that have no logic?
We all perhaps whisper to ayn rand's obsession and keats' romantic afterthoughts. What lyrical string of vowels that formed words into sentences into thoughts we would voice as you gazed from the sea of creation, from love, from notes played upon a cello or a piano whose tone was idolized by its maker? What pages of books fluttered from a time long past when words meant more than a series of letters strung together all contained within social politeness and meter? When did life mean more to you than a series of unemotional phrases that were hung out to dry on a clothesline with the obscurity of time? Where did I fit into the cubbyholes of your emotional landscape? Was it the circumference of a circle that brought you here to this place, to me, to my confusion and my fortitutde? Was it the rhythm of my repetition of the nuances of words that sometimes frustrated you into refuting sound as it crosses substance?
The artist ran downstairs to paint a barren kitchen where cupboards were stacked one upon the other in an order of geometrical afterthought. Walls never torn nor replaced from when the house was built sighed at yet another dress of colour chosen by yet another owner.The tea kettle sang and threads from her sweater snagged yet another physical object..thought following a progression from poetic meter to the reality of snow covered driveways.
Ink, blue-black like keats perhaps once used, was strewn across a blank canvas; its' blueness a hypocrisy to the black of the sky and the purity of stretched linen. 'Complete', the artist thought, Within the perimeters of her canvas, the circle became just an afterthought before kant knew how to dream; his sigh just a vision in an icelandic snowstorm.'
The artist ran her fingers through her hair and realized midnight always came at 3 A.M.