Artists in Residence

I watched the sunlit lines on bed sheets

Dance within the morning hours

From you tossing and turning

Sweetly and gracefully

On a bed we made

And I watched as long white curtains 

Flailed, awakened by a clip of winter wind

Making alive the dust that settled around

A sea of brushes and bottles of turpentine

And as I watch, I’m convinced it is you,

Who choreographs the world around you

Every moment

Every lunge, every reach

Being warm when it’s cold

Dry when it’s damp

Colors still on your cheeks while you sleep

A dab of white

A splash of red

A drip of orange

We’ve painted these walls together

Bright blue and slate gray

Our hands have slapped the canvasses

Watching hues fly and fall where they may

We’ve awoken, together, reminded

Of a night before where we became

Careless

And the evidence of love

Striped and fanned out before us

So I watched as your arms reached the ceiling

Turning to me with lifted eyelids

As your lips remain motionless

But say everything

We, as artists in residence,

Living parallel to the movements of the moon

Letting ourselves splash under the waves

Using shades of color to keep warm

Reviews

[Clouded in Hopeful Illu..]

This is a good piece of poetry for me as a reader. The visuals are stimulating and leave the reader with not only color, but movement and thought and feeling. You have touched on every sense that a person has - with that said I would have liked a little more smell as far as the turpentine went, because that smell is just as biting as a winter wind can be and I think it is a good opportunity to really put your reader in the moment with the speaker. I suggest breaking it up into stanzas. You could break it up with every "I watch" and get rid of the "and" on the sixth and tenth line.

"As I watch, I’m convinced it is you,
Who choreographs the world around you" - I love this part. The simple idea of this part is so profound and lovely that it just makes the reader feel the love that the speaker has for this other person that they are looking upon.

"We’ve awoken, together, reminded
Of a night before where we became
Careless" - I believe this is the turning point in this piece. The place where we as readers get to learn about the speaker and the person that they are doting upon. This is the place where we see past heartache and longing and loss and that the people involved are human. It makes everything before and after it seem so fragile, that if the sleeping person awoke, it might all be shattered. It makes it that much more intense as a reader because the poem is almost a whisper, a silent thought that we are scared to speak aloud less we break the spell and cause the beauty of the world that has been painted around us to fall away and we are left with nothing but careful consideration of an empty bed.

The title of this piece is what drew me in, and the piece itself is what kept me here. It is a great title because Artists in Residence spend all their time during residency working on a single piece of work or inter related work and it seems the two people in this poem and realizing that what they are working on, is actually discovering themselves through their artwork and love that was unimaginable.

Great write. I love it.