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the easel<br />
/Stag’s Leap, 2012.<br />
When I build a fire, I feel purposeful––<br />
proud I can unscrew the wing nuts<br />
from off the rusted bolts, dis–<br />
assembling one of the things my ex<br />
left when he left right left. And laying its<br />
narrow, polished, maple angles<br />
across the kindling, providing for updraft––<br />
good. Then by flame–light I see: I am burning<br />
his old easel. How can that be,<br />
after the hours and hours–all told, maybe<br />
weeks, a month of stillness–mo<strong>del</strong>ling<br />
for him, our first years together,<br />
odour of acrylic, stretch of treated<br />
canvas. I am burning his left–behind craft,<br />
he who was the first to turn<br />
our family, naked, into art.<br />
What if someone had told me, thirty<br />
years ago: If you give up, now,<br />
wanting to be an artist, he might<br />
love you all your life–what would I<br />
have said? I didn’t even have an art,<br />
it would come from out of our family’s life–<br />
what could I have said: nothing will stop me.<br />
Salto <strong>del</strong> Ciervo / Sharon Olds / Traducción de Natalia Leiderman y Patricio Foglia<br />
68
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