This is my third Pay It Forward offering. It’s a poem written for Alicia Marshall. I hope you all enjoy it!

* * *

As she looks at the canvas

that sits in front of her,

she waits for it to sing.

Running her fingers

over its surface,

she tries to hear it speak.

She knows that each canvas

has its own voice,

speaks its own language,

sings its own song.

She is but the channel

that it arrives through,

she is but the medium

able to see what others cannot.

Within her fingers,

she begins to feel droplets of water.

Letting the water build,

she can hear the thrum and throw of the waves,

even before she puts her brush

to the canvas.

As she starts painting,

water starts to pool around her feet,

lapping at her ankles.

She can hear the wind whispering to her

and feel the breeze upon her face.

There is a call of an unseen bird,

and the sound of the waves

sliding so gently over the sand.

There is the scent of the water

and sand and, somewhere in the distance,

there is the perfume of flowering jasmine.

She paints almost without seeing,

looks without using her eyes.

She paints by spirit memory now,

the light and ocean flowing from her hand

and through her brush.

It fills the canvas until it is overflowing,

full of everything that she

can no long contain.

As the water begins to recede from the room

and her feet have begun to dry,

she can finally see what she has painted.

Looking at the canvas,

now filled to the brim with blue and frothy white,

she sees a spirit within the waves,

a woman that swims with the water

towards the sun.

If she lets her hand hover over the canvas,

she can hear the rush of the water

and the sound of joyous laughter.