As a painter uses pigments
To make us see his thought,
All stretched out on canvas
A picture soon is wrought.

A poet uses lesser things
To show a grander view,
A rhymed or metered group of words
Makes us our lives review.

A painter stops a single breeze
As we see the flowers bent.
We see exactly what he wants
Exactly as it’s meant.

But the poet makes us feel the breeze
As though we were right there,
He takes us to a different time
And lets us smell the air.

Where the painter has his limits
In expression, depth and hue;
He can merely represent
A single time stopped view.

A poet’s brush is language,
His canvas is the mind,
His pigment imagination,
His space is not confined.

The painter and the poet –
Both necessary parts
Of what mankind can offer;
With and through the arts.

08/07/2003

Posted on 08/07/2003
Copyright © 2025 Brian Francis