he was a painter once-
in the sense of a duck, waddling
augustly chin up mild fingers
engraved with acrylic rice paddy
mosaics

his deft strokes, steady against
barn yard hum dry ruby in
watery crevices, between the skullcap
and cerebellum, between ages of semantics

his cast net he stirs
the mud-clodded ponds and
rasps, cane cracking leather,
I clasp on the waterlogged eyes out the window
airborne for some lost jungle to
salvage some sliver of a canvas

he turns to me on the wooden planks
and hand in hand we plummet into an abyss of
our own creation