Monet and Other Favorite Painters
By Stephen Smoke
What is more valuable
Is really hard to say
A child’s crayoned work of art
Or a signed Monet
I cannot place a price on art
Depends on what I see
Do I see what others see
Or what it means to me
I never had the pleasure
Of meeting Claude Monet
But I remember the little girl
Who used to run and play
She was good at many things
Especially climbing trees
Art was not her first love
I’d like to think ’twas me
But she outgrew a father’s love
A big wide world to see
I miss her last sweet goodbye
Yet I know it had to be
At night I sit alone and look
At paintings that she did
Was her meaning obvious
Or was it deeply hid
She did tricks with light and dark
That made me see things new
Things I’d seen a thousand times
But always looked right through
She opened up a part of me
A part I didn’t know
She made me laugh, she made me cry
I guess she made me grow
Sometimes I caress paint she brushed
Touch canvas touched by her
I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel
Sometimes it’s just a blur
I find no answers in her work
Just questions turned to gray
Do colors really fade that fast
Dead painters cannot say
© 2002 by Stephen Smoke, All Rights Reserved