Portrait Gallery: Creative License Poem by Chuck Toll

One April Claude Monet became enraptured
With an oak, a vision begging to be captured
On canvas, bare limbs stark against the light.
Magnifique! Mon Dieu, he’d paint this right!

His brushes trimmed and paint on palette, Monet
With impressionistic fervor daubed his way
Toward greatness. Alas, it soon began to pour.
Zut! Gathering up his gear, he went indoors.

La pluie continued not one week but three.
In May Monet emerged to find his tree
Now hidden under leaves of verdant green.
Merde! he yelled, stomping his feet with spleen.

Not one to beat about the bush (or tree) ,
Monet demanded that the mayor of Giverny
At once dispatch a crew to strip each and every leaf.
Later he returned to paint a tree now wrapped in grief.