Rees

After dedicating the past 15 years of my life to music and writing my father says to me—you know I really wish you still did your visual art, that’s where I think your real talent lay. There’s a heavy fog on the Rhine and the motors of the barges reverberate in the air. I feel like drawing a portrait of the river in mist, the little round table on the balcony scattered with loose tobacco the bottle of water like a woman by Matisse, cap and lighter. You at the railing, the back of your black jacket silent. There was something that drew me to the page: to draw. To remember the table by the river. Something about standing on a stage assured that my mediocrity will not be remembered. Will not resound. Gold coins shimmer on the water. To have nothing to say. Reach reach into the pocket of memory and pull threads, crumbs, the dust of an ash: nothing that could stand spoken though the birds might build a nest from it.

The billion thoughts never written down don’t leave a trace. A poem happens so fast. Like the birds dive. I miss them all the time. The ten o’clock bell rang for twenty minutes. The doves cooed in harmony. I get the feeling you’ve lost interest. There was something that drew me. I could only make copies. Everything has been imitation. Remove imitation, what remains? A sapling a bird couldn’t make a nest in. Rhine gold shimmers on the water. My silent companion she’s found she gets nothing in return. To draw this is what I planned to do.

9 August 2003