Again the brush-strokes on the canvas fail.
We cannot paint our own eyes, nor can one
cross-section of a thread reveal the tale
of all its turns and windings, how it was spun.
Eyes can’t see themselves and what they see.
If minds were simple, if we could unmask 
and know them fully, would we not then be
too simple-minded to attempt the task?
We are creatures of flux — more a direction,
more a sequence, than a place and time —
and art  is a movie-still, or a life’s cross-section,
whether in paint, or stone, or notes, or rhyme.
The strange long body of a lifetime throws
brief shadows on the moment as it goes.