Negative Space

		
Pointing to the edges of the potted palm\

She exhorted us in that velvet Aberdeen accent\

To look between, around, anywhere but at the leaves\

And in a rare moment of compliance we all, blue-overalled,\

Took up our brushes and half closed our eyes\

Seeing for the first time how what is not or has not been\

Becomes something in the defining of what is\

And that without the lamenting and the lost things\

There would be nothing there to paint
Published in The Interpreter’s House, Issue 71 – June 2019