Does it count as a gift if you're always asking for it

Blessed to have one

In the fam who gives book recs

With color, shade, hue, theory, and/or 

bible in the title.

Who passed along this tome

Of a biography on de Kooning,

That’s been with me through 

Four changes of address.

He didn’t start in watercolor

And to be honest for a while, 

The oils were just more impressive.

But then there was a learned softness

A way to bristle, to dab, to just graze

The page and make utmost impression.

If oils are the opera then

Watercolors are the emphatic whisper

In his better-hearing ear.

I was not subtle. Like at all.

My very first apartment and

Obsessed with curation, I hoped so deeply

For one of his creations.

Don’t you have just something, anything

Laying around?

After Sunday dinner one evening, 

On his way out he popped back into the Subaru 

To grab something, for me.

An already framed-in, delicate painting

A bouquet of red roses, brimming with green.

Packaged safely in luggage,

Nestled in soft t-shirts. Eager

To explore various wall space

And see what made most sense

For painting’s new home.

A morning delightfully spent.

With hammer in hand and eyesight exact

I decide she goes right by the front door.

A welcoming vision, perennial bloom

Creative fecundity to all those who look,

Willing to receive.

Thank you Tio, for the flowers.