son of papoose

The one and only Papoose by tk...
and the tribute
unearthed, chiseled in stone...

She'd never thrown the baby out with the bath water 'cause there never was a baby. The coarse brushes, always new, fine used brushes for detail, mini-pallet, and jelly glasses dripping of paint, sealed with rubber-banded wax paper in her tightly cinched leather papoose, rattled on her back with each step along the path she blazed across the bee-buzzing copper meadow towards the boulders down by the green willows at calm water's edge. The rocks were her blank grey canvas, a multidimensional perspective already built in the protruding ragged texture, where she birthed brushed babies with lifespans determined by each cleansing torrid rain.

She occasionally sang in a whisper, not to waken the small sparrows: quiet little papoose don't you cry, mama's onto shadow where the cool breeze sighs. Tramping in the crackling dryness across the meadow her waist length whiskey-colored hair swished to and fro brushing the papoose, and if you were a man you could easily tell she was not a boy. White jean shorts exposing trained dancer's legs with the promise of dozens of rejected marriage proposals from office boys. Thankfully, Abigail had lost her office clerk wheeze and could breath again.

She stopped one time, turning to look as the bee's white noise faded, and saw an eight foot grizzly fifty yards opposite the Sun, a black tower amongst the waist-high grass. Time stopped too, the visitor stretched high a moment peering at the five foot painter, head cocked, smiling she hoped. Abigail did not move, deciding against charging towards the shaggy fellow. It dropped and disappeared, the bees dove into the next chorus accompanied by off-tempo cricket tenor and the rustle of underground orchestra. She decided - I will paint the bear in the panorama of yellow flowers snatching a fragile crispy hive and give him violet eyes like my mother. She unstrapped her kit and hurried, noticing there were dark clouds speaking in low staccato tones on the western horizon, and before her the willow singing in the sigh of the breeze.

painting: Ophelia
by Odilion Redon