Gary LeBel
Brings to Life
She watches his every stroke—the painter had drawn his outline an hour before—she watches him as he deftly grinds and mixes his colors to get the tones and hues just right, a good likeness,
to the brown of her husband’s eyes, the warm blood-flush in lips that could never conceal his thoughts, dressed in the tunic she’d made him, her finest work in muslin. Her husband would beam with pride as he’d run his hands proudly over the fabrics she’d haggled for in the marketplace, and had tailored for him with such aplomb.
She watches his every stroke, sits by the artist’s side for hours as he fleshes in each nuance of her beloved’s countenance on the hardwood panel that will cover her darling’s face, each whisker brought to life with a detailing brush of but three or four bristles of horsehair,
and though it’s an agony to watch her beloved’s likeness emerge, in trade she forestalls her grief, forgets that she must go on, must raise their children without him, wishing the artist would take years to complete his work so that she could lose herself in forgetfulness, could sleep dreamlessly through the interminable nights to come,
to be always waiting for him to climb the eleven steps from his workshop,
if it were not for the boy,
their eldest
who has his father's eyes,
his dark complexion,
the down of a budding beard
Image Credit: “Man with Sword Belt,” Roman, British Museum
About the Author
Gary LeBel is an artist-poet living in the greater Atlanta area whose poems have appeared in journals throughout the USA, the UK, Japan, and India. He believes that art, or anything else worth doing, is a life-long pilgrimage.