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A Maple Branch

 

When my friend Phyllis looked out a window she saw a painting.

This morning I looked out a window and saw a painting:

The leaves on a branch of the maple tree, green, filigreed,

And quivering, yes, but with the sun upon them,

 pure gold

not the whole tree, just the branch of a tree,

 reaching out in front of a forest of trees,

 an army of greens, marching in place.

Catching the occassional ray of sun,

 Moving as the breeze moves

the burnished leaves intricately cut and alive

waved to me with a tease of the breeze,

golden from a brush of the sun.

 


Phyllis painted, not the tops, nor the bottoms

 but whatever part of a tree might be captured

within the limitations of a  window frame.

It was the frame that made the picture

, the frame and the skill of the painter.

Fingers bent and twisted could hardly grasp the paintbrush,

 (Phyllis had rheumatoid arthritis).

But sense of color sharp to the end , they applied paint

to suggest wonder and surprise in the familiar.

Framed so that the ordinary became the extraordinary .

 

Phyllis seldom went out, but with her eyes

and love of the natural world

 She went out every time she passed a window.

When she could no longer walk in the woods

She moved from landscape painting to  window framed paintings

A clump of birch trees, an apple tree in full blossom,  

the striking red midriff of a fall maple,

 larger than life,

 

What does it mean: the beauty in a stippled bark,

or a maple leaf polished by sun?

How much we see when our vision is limited?

The importance of focus?

The DNA of a New England fall, or a Maine summer; i

n a selected slice, -  everything?

 

 I do not know, but I know that

When Phyllis left this world

she left to us her way of seeing,

already framed. 

 

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