The Master’s Hand/ You...Drawing...Me! Poem by Dónall Dempsey

THE MASTER’S HAND

I ring you up
to see if you are seeing
Monet painting
in slow motion

our voices joined
across the phone
we both
now watching
this same forgotten footage

our eyes
glued to the flickering screen
each in our separate rooms
across the distance of this
dark night.

The master’s hand
moves like a swan
making decisions...changing its mind
an actor’s voiceover
speaking Monet’s mind

as he too once watched
this moving image
of him
& his hand:


“Poor hand...not knowing
where to go to next
what step…to take! ”

Our hearts
like Monet’s hand
holding the unspoken secret
of our untold
love
this seeing separately together
our first veiled declaration
of what could be

watching Monet’s moving hand move us
both of us
not knowing what to do next
but both of us knowing
that this
is us.

At the other end of the phone
our tears
... invisible.


*******


YOU...DRAWING...ME

Your hand
trembles before the page
as if afraid

& then
plunges in
swimming into the whiteness

marks appear
out of nowhere
as if they chased away
the invading intruder

the hand held now
paused above the page
stranded in mid-air
amazed at the face

that stares
back up at it
as if asking itself:
“Did I do that? ”

The ghost of a face
emerges from the charcoal
as if from
a mist

its lines
claiming to be more me
than me my self
as if it had caught the very essence
of my soul

trapped now
within this page
(it’s endless whiteness)
knowing
there is no
escape.

*******