Watercolour Woman

 Watercolour woman
Her eyes filled with ink
As she looked at the ghost
Of a girl in her sink

The paint was still wet
And it fussed up her face
Clung in circles ’neath her eyes
And the place where she slept
Was the bed she was born in
For comfort she looked
For the first rays of morning

Had lemon iced hair
Which drip curled away
From her face like ice-cream
In a generous display
But the subtle vanilla
Egg whites of her eyes
Were shot through with red
Like a fisherman's prize

Was a sensitive girl
Never went out to play
Her voice pianissimo
Soft like sorbet
And beautifully flawed
Like a shell without creature
She moved like a seed
And no-one could reach her

To see her in the street she is really nothing special
Just a person that you walk past on your way to somewhere else
And she’s living with her parents
In some sort of social housing
Though you’ve never really asked her
You just know that’s how it is

But when you see her at the art class stripped of every preconception
In a pose that holds the eye of every person in the room
Then you know she’s something special
And you’d better pay attention
Or your drawing won’t do justice
To Lucia – studio queen

There’s an aura she creates that pervades the art room space
As you try to catch the magic of her presence in your work
See the looks of concentration
As the lines caress the form
Not a murmur in the room
As the images take shape

And remember who you owe when you look back on your drawings
And give thanks to the model who made your materials come to life
And maybe take a moment
To consider what she’s up to
Now she doesn’t do the modelling
At the art class any more

Lucia spends her days packing groceries in a store
Just a person that you walk past on your way to somewhere else

Ride

Ride on the paper lung railway
With cotton steam puffing from its throat
Ride to the last destination
On a folded origami boat

Ride on a paper plane climbing
Pilot’s license assured
Cutting a Heaven-bound runway
You’re the only passenger on board