I wrote this poem a long time ago and have fiddled with it over the years. I have a great emotional attachment to it - Cerulean Blue being my favourite colour. The prison walls are the edges of her garden but to her they seemed like a prison. I think the lady in this poem is a little bit of me...wouldn't we all like to escape into a a beautiful painting...?
Caeruleus
1660s, from L. caeruleus "blue, dark blue,
blue-green," perhaps dissimilated from caelulum, dim. of caelum "heaven,
sky," of uncertain origin (see celestial). The Latin word was applied by Roman
authors to the sky, the Mediterranean, and occasionally to leaves or fields.
Gathering
her equipment together, she knew
that this
was the last time she’d paint in blue.
She was
just about able
to lift her
paint box onto her little table
in a
corner of her tiny garden.
Over the
years she did succeed
and the
flowers were proof indeed
that she
turned her tiny prison walls and concrete
into an
Italian wilderness of flowers and shrubs
and her
arthritic hands had tended the pots and tubs.
She had grown
rare plants and flowers that no one had seen.
Now she
was going into the garden and placing her easel
where
she could see her own countryside; and while
the perfumes of
the flowers floated on a scented breeze
her
wrinkled face was upturned, warming in the sun’s rays.
She
placed a sheet of bright white paper onto her board
Her hat
casting lacy patterned shadows onto the paper
While
her soul soared with anticipation of her
secret,
painting, assignation.
Looking
at her old battered painting tubes
she sighed
while debating which colour to use
‘Cerulean’ she thought, ‘Cerulean, caelum, heaven and sky.
‘It’s considered celestial’ and her
sparkling blue eyes told why
she felt
overwhelmed by the beauty of her long life.
Cerulean
- the colour of the sky; and so she started to paint.
Her
hands shook as she took her brush and dabbed it into a tiny
pot of
water where reflections of ripples danced and
the
brush dipped it into with a glance, and
she held
her brush like a lance
and it
was full of a glorious blue…
Caeruleus…
Latin
for blue, dark blue, blue green.
She swept
the brush with an arcing sweep.
and here
she saw her first tiny peep of
a torn
piece of sky - a hole like lace.
Dreamily
she wondered
‘what if
there was a way through
this
secret space into the blue
for me
to disappear from view
A pure,
painter’s celestial place.
Where I
may find one last embrace
So she
painted more cerulean blue
her
favourite flower garden hue.
...
In later
days, people wondered where
the old
lady painter had left her chair
Where
had she gone as she’d left no trace
of the
painter who had lived all alone in this place.
All they
had found was a straw hat and lace,
decrepit
pink ribbons and her brush in its place.
They
found the water and her easel too
and a
quite quite empty tube of cerulean blue
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