PORTRAIT …. Maureen Clifford ©
The Scribbly Bark Poet
He had tried mixing the colours, but they weren't right.
The blues weren't blue enough, the greens were too yellow,
He was restless. Change did that to him.
Someone once described him as ' Averse to change'.
Maybe the cracks in the wall were starting to show.
It's hard to be a perfectionist - all of the time.
Was it the new moon or the full moon that bought the
crazies out?
He couldn't remember - and did it really matter?
He looked once again at the photo he had snapped.
The colours pristine and sharp almost ephemeral
Magic the way the light captured her beauty
Already she had changed.
Beauty at best is transitory.
***
The portrait is one by my Great Uncle Sir Luke Fildes - a renowned Victorian era painter who to the best of my knowledge was certainly not crazy. He painted Kings and Queens, has many works hanging in Buckingham Palace and art galleries around the world and created illustrations for Charles Dicken's last book The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
