Beauty Is A Creation Of Ghosts

“A March morning is only as drab as he who walks in it without a glance skyward . . .”

    ~Aldo Leopold

They say that when an artist dies he gets to paint the sky -

his soul ascends up off the earth, he holds his paintbrush high

Colors burst forth from his mind onto an easel black;

calling for the sun to wake, smile, and call back.

A stream of orange floats along into a pond of pink,

swallowed then by lakes of red which in turn does shrink

    into a sea of purple-grey that stretches over Earth,

waking it in joyous song for the new days birth.

The sun sits mighty up above, shrouded now in blue;

ruling over all the world, the stars, and heaven, too.

Puffy clouds of white roll through, guided by a breath;

never would you even think to thank the dark of death

    for this day the sky shines bright with light for all to see -

a lily in a flowerpot or a woodcock in a tree.

I like it when the colors and clouds look painted in the sky

and then all I have to do is thank the artist who has died.