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there must have always
been art books in the house
growing up
seeing that my dad
was an artist
in that he looked for
and pointed out
beauty to me,
as a child,
wherever he saw it.

photographs of
colored ink in jars,
the thick weight of
tracers in pastels,
the dining room table painted
and re-painted tangerine
beneath the stained glass
window, he had
meticulously created.

there must have always
been art books in the house
growing up,
because where else
could i have first seen
the painting of the turbulent sea
with blood in the water
and the sharks menacing
in the foreground waves.
are those flying fish
headed toward a hurricane?
a small rudderless
dingy- dismasted,
acting as an indecent refuge
from the pending storm.
the man
enslaved?
escaped?
free, but to what end?

even as a child
i remember feeling
the horror of flipping
through that book
and landing on the gulf stream.

i knew nothing of symbols
or history
or mortality
or wars
or vulnerability
or american imperialism.
or the fragility of human life.
or the dominance of nature.

but, i’d run my fingers
over the smooth glossy page
yearning to feel
the texture of the oils
smelling the piney turpantine.
what was he looking at?
how could he be so serene
in such disorder?

my dad
was an artist
in the way that he
looked for and pointed
out beauty to me,
as a child,
by leaving art books
scattered in our house
for me to explore
in the extended
pools of solitude.

not all lessons are explicity taught:  
beauty is a making one of opposites,
and the making one of opposites
is what we are going after in ourselves.