ICE ON FIRE

Were I a painter,
My studio would be mad, filled with paintings of your face,
Attempt after vain attempt to remember your eyes,
To paint them-
But how do you paint ice on fire?

Were I a musician,
The chords and keys at my fingertips
Would play but one song:
Your name
In a thousand melodies.

Were I a poet,
I would be drunk of an afternoon,
Describing how you looked that day,
The sun shining behind your head like a halo,
In a hundred different ways
In smeared and garbled pencil in the corner of a shadowy bar.

But I am none of those things.
My only art is the way I feel.
My painting for you is the way I see you,
When I see you.
My only song is the crack in my voice when I struggle to find
Something to say
When we talk on the phone.
And my poem for you
Is this one.