Tell two artists to create life in words

and what you’ll receive in a pulse

will be enough.

Living begins when we see that every person passing through

harbors a story we do not,

has a solution to some problem

we have yet to realize,

is the voice for one lost

and the encouragement to one beginning.

Tell two artists to create life in words

and you will see in a toss why the coin has two sides.

 

Anat asks ‘Why’

to which Art replies,

“Does the faint tapping on a goatskin drum

steadily grow louder the more we learn and seek to play thunder?”

 

A thread as tied to hers

spun by colors she has yet to see.

 

In a toss, we mark our coins.

 

As men utter ‘life is without reason’ or mutter, by exhausted breaths, that

‘artists lose…or gain to understand’,

Anat plays to a tune that time forgets and begets.

 

With an eye towards heaven, the doting daughter replies,

“You and I are the voices,

forever searching for others who will understand,

share,

connect,

change

a dying world into one that lives for art:

the heart of the people,

we’ve somehow forgotten

make us whole.”

 

Tell two artists to create life in words,

and what you’ll receive in a pulse

will be enough.

-Amy Struthers

(Image by Leonardo Yip)