Paint

In my post, Passion, I mentioned a sonnet on watching paint dry. Friend BB took that as a challenge and declared he would write one on that very subject. His sonnet arrived in this morning's email, which I now present here.

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WORLD FIRST

In a panegyric about good writing, Crow said she was prepared to read a sonnet about watching paint dry. Since this is only the fifth poem I have ever written it would be optimistic to claim the first half of her assertion, but at least the subject matter rises to the challenge of the second part. On reading this it may rapidly become apparent that my blog is devoted to the joys of technology.

Barrett Bonden.

Sonnet – Paint Drying

These colors were not ours. Too bright? Too fair?
Another family’s concealment needs
Barring our quick possession of their bare
Regressive record of domestic deeds.
Our brush implies a tyrant’s power – a blade
To cut away unwanted otherness
To scour, excise, delete or amputate
Interring then remaining evidence.
A hand-swept wave of green stops up the eyes
And throats of calling, drowning memories
Creates a hardening seal to authorize
Our ownership of coloured histories.

We watch, paint dries, a thickness evident
In years, decades, a time-based insulant.



Dear Friend BB, you have lived up to your promise. I can do no less, and now live up to mine. Well done! Very well done!

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You can - and do! - write poetry, despite your protestations otherwise, and your modesty. I'm afraid if I had written about paint drying, it would have been a pale, shabby cousin of an Ogden Nash ditty, not a sonnet, and certainly not as thoughtful as is this beautiful creation. (That was not intended as a slap at Ogden Nash, because I love his work.)

Sonnet, (c) 2009 by Barrett Bonden (RR)
Other (c) 2009 Martha McLemore