Our Masterpiece

 

There’s something about Art Galleries.

A beacon for lost souls, the vulnerable.

Cathedrals of catharsis in the worship of art.

Galleries can be that way I’ve noticed.

So much beauty inspired by so much pain.

Maybe we seek the same transmutation internally.

 

She was chirpy, full of energy

But I knew inside she was falling apart.

Sometimes you just know, I can’t say how.

Somewhere in your heart you just know.

We sat and looked at a painting together.

I knew it wouldn’t take much, just one or two kind words.

 

Then it happened, she fell, the reservoir of tears overflowed.

She unburdened herself on a stranger. 

All her hopes dreams and fears bottlenecking

On the warm hard ball that forms in our throat when we cry

But she could never be a stranger, she was me, I was her.

We are all the same on a soul level.

 

I hugged her then held her hand, I listened.

I understood, I really understood.

She said she’d been praying to the picture of Jesus.

She’d just asked him for help, then I sat down.

She asked if he could have sent me to help her?

I told her he may well have, but I could never be sure.

 

Maybe things work that way sometimes.  I do believe in Angels.

I had to meet the Devil before I did, but I do.

She said I couldn’t understand how much me turning up meant.

I sighed and whispered…. “I think I do, someone turned up for me once”

 

You see….

 

That was our exhibition,

That was our art.

A young man hugging an old woman.

Brushstrokes of tear soaked mascara on the canvas of our clothes.

In a place full of paintings of dead people, by dead people that have had their time.

This was our time.

This was our masterpiece.

 

 

Ged Thompson/ Liverpool Poet and writer 31/03/14