She stares into her canvas, drawing
to her brush a blood-red droplet
of paint for another flower, her hands
delicate, as diaphanous as the wings
of a white butterfly, with blue veins
running a precious lace-like pattern
from her thin fingers to her heart.
She knew she didn't have long to live,
but death was uncharacteristically
slow in fulfilling itself, as she sought
week by week to finish her painting.
Not a masterpiece, I sensed, and
perhaps not even intended
to be finished, but instead a sweet,
wonderful journey of the heart, as if
retracing a memory-strewn path
back to her beginning. She paused
at times in her wanderings along the
sunlit path of that canvas, too ill
to leave her bed, or looking upon
the world from a hospital window,
the shadows of her death intensifying.
The last time she was able to paint
she seemed aware that her death
was near, and thanked God for the years
allotted her. She died several days later,
her canvas, her life, largely incomplete
but her true journey now underway.

*(For Dorothy, my painting partner,
who died Thursday, Aug. 5, 2010)