Building Blocks (premise)

This poem helps define the premise behind Building Blocks: Time molds vivid memories from one’s past into the building blocks of one’s writing. The poem was influenced by my frequent visits to Fredericksburg, Virginia art galleries, and came to mind this past Friday when I was thinking about all the monthly First Friday gallery open houses I have missed since I moved.

Life is not a single canvas
across which the palette of existence plays out
the days, years, the joys, the tears
Life is but a wall
like the art gallery hall
upon which are hung the transient images of our breath

Each panel a journey
a story unto itself blessed by its very completion
related, segmented, belated, translated
Stories awaiting readers
like a song yet song
notes rising and falling between birth and death

Life is not a single canvas
but the wall upon which our memories are hung

(Life is not a single canvas, © Steven S. Walsky 2009.)

Liberty Town (poem, repost)

Liberty Town

It hung on a wall at Liberty Town,
a painting,
like a thespian holding sway.
In a space, yet so small,
the artist had so much to say.
The pigments of her dreams, life, fantasies
danced across the canvas,
enticing my eyes
to follow the progression of color.
An oscillating pitch of senses,
all calling to me;
and in the light cast by the canvas
I read far more.
For each project is a love affair
between the artist and her creation.
And like love itself,
a piece of art can be a most treasured gift
to last a thousand years,
or easily destroyed by the water of tears.

(Liberty Town, © Steven S. Walsky, 2009, all rights reserved.)

The inspiration for this poem was a painting hanging on the wall at the  Liberty Town Arts Workshop in Fredericksburg, VA in 2009.  As I am about to move, and will no longer be able to visit Liberty Town and the other wonderful art galleries in Fredericksburg, I am reposting this poem.

stranger than fiction…