Cloudskinner II

Cloudskinner II

My grandfather’s studio was in a garage;
gun-metal cold in winter,
tin roof simmering in summer;
a grandson’s paradise
thick with odors of fresh fruit and gun oil
blending with muslin starch
and stacks of musty magazines,
old leather boots, bright wool shirts,
a torn sheepskin jacket, sprigs of pine branches
dripping with sweet sap, bouquets of sage,
handfuls of wild flowers in jelly jars,
rust on the points
of several varieties of barbed wire,
and summer dust lying deep gray
on the split pane of the solitary window.

He stood spread-legged
mixing oil paints on his palate,
then coaxing animal bristles
to create a cosmos of clouds;
dark and heavy with rain,
drenched scarlet from a sunset,
puffy as cotton candy with popcorn faces,
thick shoulders and rippling
muscles of mist—peaks, valleys,
pregnant with thunder,
tongues of lightning,
and hoary herds of caribou,
their heavy hooves flashing
across the knees of the sky,
all captured alive on canvas.

Glenn Buttkus

April 2010

Listed as #8 over on dVerse Poets-Meeting the Bar

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