The Purple Poppy-Mallow
Somewhere deep below the the grey mottled multi-layered portrait of me whose surface has hardened like a criminal imprisoned by heartache and grief you will find a canvas of ghosts the lost souls of my life buried beneath six feet of paint who are suddenly as clear and luminous as the stars observed from the deck of an oars up caravel slicing through the wake of an ancient night Their resurrection began with my own summoned by age and the pain that I can longer bear which drew me like a gentleman caller to the fields of pentimento where the earliest sketches and baby step brush strokes of those who I have misjudged disappointed and most of all miss thrive like purple-poppy-mallow waiting to be