by Thomas Reed Willemain
In middle school we learned all art began with “long sketchy lines” and after that we were boys on our own unskilled unless you count stick men the universal paleolithic alphabet of visual expression among the unschooled and ungifted. Later we accepted that lack as one of so many we never mastered as we never mastered Italian or women or what to say at wakes though in time we were able to conjure arts not taught in school by bored teachers or in parked cars by eager girls. We invented arts out of nothing we painted bedtime stories in the quiet colors of sleepy grandchildren, sang good mornings to the cautious fluttering eyelids of waking wives, invented invisible arts out of nothing but air. ___ His poetry has appeared in Sheila-Na-Gig, Two Thirds North, Closed Eye Open, Dillydoun Review Poetry and elsewhere. He holds degrees from Princeton University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A native of western Massachusetts, he lives with his wife and son near the Mohawk River in upstate New York.