Damaged Muse

When evening light will reach and fall just so,

and animated shapes emerge from lines,

with the darting brush's quick, sure flow,

and the artist briefly stops the rush of time,

your incandescent waves of falling hair,

a face that's so possessed of dark and light,

a complexion held in stillness fair,

is captured, held complete—not quite.

The broken smile still has the will to charm.

I give this haunted art what it demands.

It holds me, too, for now I'm free from harm.

This oddly frozen hour--cold paper in my hands.

How I have come to learn the artifice in art--

True seeing comes not from eyes, but heart.