Ph: Life: My Mother's Art - New Eyes Poem by Brian Johnston

I was young when I realized my mom was different,
Different from me at least, for sometimes
She would draw or paint and miracles would happen.
Her penciled or charcoaled strokes on paper projecting life
Into two dimensions, though color, of course, was absent,
Like God, a multi-dimensional entity, manifesting Himself
Into the three-dimensional flesh of Jesus Christ,
God’s Presence too much for mortal man to take in.
Her images drawn from a world of fragmentary illumination,
Pre-dawn scenes where mind supplies the missing detail
That eye cannot quite gather in, so soft, so colorless the light.
Proportions too are faultless: contours never flat,
Roof lines never too long or short, you are with her,
Mountains exactly where God put them,
Though not strictly photographic, as if aware of her gaze,
And truly wanting to look their best for …. the Artist.

And colors too, the amazing blend of watercolors that
Always complimented even nature’s imagination.
A few strokes of her brush and a girl’s face would emerge from
What would be mere daubing on my part, believe me, I tried.
But for mom, the colors always ran, flowed into perfection,
Making it seem sometimes like gravity was up not down.
You wanted her to win, and somehow, she most always did.
The paint itself would evolve with time to become
Who the girl herself would be, if only she knew how,
Perfection shining through the textures of mere colors,
Even the rose colored light of the rising sun wherein she posed
Erupting from her image as if Venus herself broached the shore,
Floating as it were, erect on shell, on a sea born of man’s tears.
Oh, my mother said everything with the genius of new eyes.

Only with my words do I dare to paint images that so touch
The emotions that shook me to the core of my being as a child.
Did my mother wreck me, did she draw me into coral reefs
Of her imagination like a siren might a forlorn sailor.
I leave that for you to judge, my reader, my friend, my lover,
Whose mind is the intangible parchment of my self-expression.
Her parting legacy to her son, the gift of my very own new eyes.