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Monet and other Favorite Painters

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