The Brushstroke

Brushstrokes fall
from the canvas
and die with outstretched arms
and cold open eyes…

Outside, reflections answer through the thick windows
with plotted, indifferent motions..

I kick one.
This brushstroke is lifeless.
I pick it up, inspect it thoroughly for diseases,
then carefully maneuver it into my pocket
with no real plan.

I make my way home,
the trip in a daze.
I do not hear the bus's squeaky brakes
or people vying for at-large attention.
The trip blends with ten thousand others.

In my closet
the brushstroke stays in the tomb of my tweed coat pocket
for years
and years.
It was 1933.
It is now 2008.

I yank the clanky chain to the closet's only light,
which bursts into a magnificent dimness.
A silver coat of dust glimmers under the aging bulb's eyes.
I place my hand in the pocket, clumsily searching,
then tentatively feeling…
deeper and deeper into its dark recesses
until at last
the brushstroke speaks.

I ritually place it on today's newspaper
shouting headlines to anyone who cares to look its way.
The brushstroke lays in still, its motionless trance
like a melting Dali timepiece
or a coarsely-brushed Picasso canvas with uncertain lines.

The kidnapped artifact now has a great lineage
connected to another time,
when traffic noise and the buzzing of neon signs
held altogether different hopes and prayers.

I have an old, old clock
that still ticks once a second, from 1933.
I place the brushstroke next to it,
on my great-grandmother's white frilly doily.

There we sit like four poker players gathered around a desperate pot,
four anachronisms together on the fourth floor,
hiding from time, in a dark corner of the city;
sleeping through the nights,
our dying pasts growing colder with each subtle sunset.
The refrigerator joins us
and tosses in its vintage hum…