First Sight Poem by gershon hepner

First sight is the one that you never forget
and the one that you always desire
to capture again, like the time you first met,
when your heart for the first time caught fire.

The rest of your life you attempt to recapture
a moment that never returns,
but what happens later can’t bring back the rapture
that only a first sight discerns.


Pierre Bonnard painted his wife Marthe de Méligny 380 times, naked or clothed, as a series of apparitions and hints. He continued painting her with the body of a 30-year-old, even when he was 80 and had been dead for four years.


8/27/98