You need not study the piece
for long to see spaces on the canvas
where flecks are missing,
where separate yellows
and blues no longer blend
into a thick impasto of green,
where ant colonies have collapsed,
lupines forsaken the meadows.
Paint keeps disappearing
where trout speckled the streams,
cardinals enlivened the pines.
Chips of color fall to the ground,
stepped on by visitors,
tracked across the gallery floor,
the artist unable to brush
life back into the voids.
—
Bonnie Wehle lives in Tucson, Arizona where she serves as a docent at the University of Arizona Poetry Center. Her work has appeared in Coal Hill Review, Rockvale Review, River Heron Review, Sky Islands Journal, The Ocotillo Review, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, A Certain Ache: Poems in Women’s Voices, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2022. Her new chapbook, Little Altars, is scheduled for release in spring 2025.
