! ! Studio Visit Poem by Michael Shepherd

Feet slightly apart, firm
as at stable ease, yet
ready for the glorious unexpected;

left thumb, pressured
white to pink under the nail,
hooked through wooden palette,

its organic shape summoning
some internal organ – heart,
lungs, kidneys, liver –

squeezed dabs of pure pigment,
waiting, vivid, muted, or in
a cosmic swirl of some new sight;

looked me in the eye and said,
ordinary is so beautiful… the studio silenced,
paint brush poised,

and the whole singing world, given
now a blessing, to be its ever
miracle of light and life and space,

of the ordained, of ordered
breath of life shaped as a palette,
shaped as an eye, sheds inner light

on outer, mind that knows only
present here and now; his gaze,
still on mine; waiting for the sight

of the miraculous in pupil of my eye,
mind as his canvas, waiting too
for the world made ever new;

‘only watch, and all else happens;
ordinary is so beautiful.’