The Artist's Store Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Faces turned to the wall,
Cold-shouldering the world,
Squares of canvas
Lean against the dark,
Stretched to the limit
Blank, blind, anonymous
As stones. Cut adrift from easels,
Stacked in racks;
Like an orchestra's brass section
When it's silent, All taps and pipes,
U-bends and gaping mouths
Ugly as plumbing.

Each canvas-back is bare as a scraped pig,
But turn the pictures round,
You're hooked! They dazzle you; with their
Quicksands of delight,
They swallow you up and spit you out like pips.

In the artists' store
Wonder hides behind frames like the sun that sleeps
In an angels' folded wings.
Magic sleeps, like the fire
That flames from an actor
His hero-greasepaint on.

Something miraculous happens when paint meets canvas,
Old as caves, deep as dawn.