Mrs. Van Wyhe gave me
My first sketchbook
In which she passed out gladly to all her art students
From her filing cabinet.
One spiral notebook
With pages as white
As a spring time cloud
I opened to the
First page
As I would to case to a new playstation game
One
Beautiful
Textured
Piece of paper
Banded
Together
With a black wire
My hands was
Poised ready to draw
Like a printer
Setting idle
But
I resisted that great temping urge
To set it on a shelf
And polish it ever hour
Like a musician
Does with a music award
I resisted
That crazy feeling
To put it
In a crystal glass case
And cherish it
Like the U.S. Constitution
So I sat
At my desk
And pulled out my pencil
And drew
On this sketch pad
On which my hands were
So grateful to draw on
I drew a tiger.
So the moral of my ode is this:
White is once,
Unless you use “Tide with bleachâ€
White
Is the absence of color
White isn’t forever
When you have a sketchpad.
For all the artist out there you know exactly what I'm talking about.
