Produced by Maine Poetry Central and Dennis Camire

This week’s poem, by Ed Reilly of St Joseph’s College, is inspired by his visit to The Colby College Museum of Art.

 

Watercolor Done By a Child Unknown, c. 1850

By Ed Reilly

 

If you could see this watercolor you made

hanging in the museum at Colby College,

a place already into its adulthood when you

created your masterpiece, though you surely

saw it as no great work of art, would not have

imagined its hanging in an art museum,

a collection featuring, as the sign says, folk art,

viewers remarking on its beauty, its rainbow colors,

how you seemed in love with blues, oranges,

and yellows. Perhaps your stock of colors was limited,

although neither your imagination nor passion came

up short, whatever your limitations. You probably

never saw live peacocks strutting by, though they

appear here. The rooster, goose, yes, most likely.

Your toys in that time would have been few,

but I think you must have enjoyed the hoop I see

twirling in your picture. I step back to get a broader

view, wondering for whom you painted this array,

this record of your having lived, whatever

emptiness the world holds otherwise of you today.

The key is that woman to the right of the child,

neither one, in the way of children’s pictures, 

a true factual portrait. But truth comes, as you

knew, in other ways. Perhaps the three hearts arranged

vertically to the right, along the woman’s left side, 

her heart’s side, tells it all: a child, like children 

eternally, telling her mother that she loves her.

 

Dennis Camire can be reached at [email protected]