Masterpiece

by: Brian Seay

My pen bleeds profusely onto the crisp legal pad,

groping in the dark for the right sentence,

a painting on my canvas,

allowing the sap to flow like a rivulet.

My words are a lump of unmolded clay on the potter’s wheel.

The words are concealed in hidden chambers and recesses.

My poem, an unripe fig before harvest.

My hands clutch the plow,

perspiring like a slave on the cotton plantations.

My pen stops dead in its tracks.

I prune and weed the garden,

changing, blending and layering my words.

The potter’s wheel revolves

and the clay lies between my firm hands,

moving my thumb into the center,

smoothing out the lumps,

keeping the clay on the wheel.

My words are like silver being refined in the steel furnace,

getting rid of the dross,

bringing forth all the impurities of the metal.

I, the silversmith, watch my words,

consumed in the heap of the blazing inferno,

melting away useless stanzas.

I wait for the harvest,

when the fresh, soft figs will ripen,

and reap succulent rewards,

as a farmer waits for his crops to yield for the season.

My words are a treasure.

I cultivate and nurture them

as a mother hen provides warmth to her young.

The fig ripens,

the silver blasts out the steel furnace,

the painting, done.