The Idle Artist

Posted to Grit Uplifted

I sit by the river, and it is a river of paint, the reeds like brushes, dipping and lifting it away to an imaginary canvas. I am Van Gogh, watching my vision flower across the sky, colouring the clouds, giving them life and animation. How casually they take up their roles, laughing at the piece: What care I? I am only air! Very well you paint me in the raiment of a priesthood, labour’s worn jeans, teenage fashions. Alright, I’ll dance for you, silly dreamer, and will you make a prophecy of my play? It is only the whimsy of the wind that tells this story, and only your own wandering mind that reads so much into it.

“Yes,” I whisper to the river, the brush, the canvas, to the mischevious actors on stage.

“And yet there is truth to it.”