To the unknown artists who remind us of our humanity, tie ribbons around bombs of truth, and create sanctuaries of tranquility amidst storms--this poem honors your path.

Ode to the Unknown Artist

To you who remind us of our humanity

Tie ribbons around bombs of truth

And create sanctuaries of tranquility amidst storms

This poem honors your path

Day 1: Not a scribble to nibble

Oh! For the gold nectar to once more flow in her mind

For her thoughts to coalesce into cobwebs of beauty

Not that tangled web

Where no muse of a bee appears 

to buzz away bad cobwebs

And leave je ne sais quoi 

That elusive beautiful bomb of ideas that explodes and leaves

Beauty

She could never say how she got there

Only that she was

For she was an Artist

So what was she if she couldn’t create Art?

Her recrimination was a stone around her neck

Dragging her to drown in a Lake of Despair

Because she could not produce a scribble 

Or an idea for her mind to nibble

Day 2: Salt & Cyanide

She wallowed 

in her hurricane of grief 

until there was only salt and cyanide 

in her desert soul

And in this tsunami of sadness

Her soul evaporated

Until not even her thoughts sulked

And not even a hail of happiness 

Could pierce her pallid mind

Her ebony heart quivered

in the snowstorm of her grief

Today, she had failed to brave the Lake of Despair

Day 3: The Snowflake

In her mind, it was hailing 

A snowstorm of ideas 

Until she was snowed in

By the very storm of them

In time, she knew

The sun would melt away the storm

Leaving just one molecule of an idea

To bloom into a snowflake

Or, she would find that shovel

And dig until she rescued herself

From her own avalanche of ideas

To stand in the doorway of possibility again

She loved that doorway

For through it, she could glimpse 

the snow softly falling upon the pines

That bordered the path that would lead to her creation

The path was icy at first

And as she slid on tenuous legs like a fawn 

She thought, Don’t look down. Take it one step at a time

And sure enough, as she slipped 

and fell and 

tumbled 

up again

The long and icy path soon thawed out

And she glided onto a piece of solid ground

At least that’s what she thought it was

And so, of course,

As soon as she thought she had reached the end of the path

Where her dream snowflake shimmered and trembled like a fallen star

She realized that as she moved, so did her snowflake

And she realized there was still ten thousand miles to go

To touch that lightness and beauty

And so she trudged on

Slipping 

and falling 

on the black ice 

of her own hope 

It wasn’t all falling

Sometimes she floated above the ice

And for a moment she would spread her wings 

And sip the champagne of triumph

And sometimes, the passion 

that flamed in her heart would 

leap from her eyes and melt 

the ice so that 

for a moment she could 

sprint instead of stumble

She was near now

She could inhale the scent of shimmer in the air

And that was ambrosia to her

She stood

Her boulders were pebbles now

But they still pressed pain into her skin

Yet, she put one bruised and swollen foot

In front of the other

And inch by inch

She slid

And wobbled

Her way up the mountain

Until at last

She stared at her shimmering snowflake

And smiled