I look at paintings and I think
How full and wondrous it must be
To see or dream, and then to make
That vision a reality.

How I would love, with colored brush,
To bring a world inside my mind
To canvas for the world too see,
And leave this drab gray one behind —

But then recall, with some chagrin,
My father was an artist who
Put brush and paint away for good
When he was only thirty-two.

For though he loved to paint, he was
In a too-common situation:
What he could see, he couldn’t match,
And so stopped out of sheer

Frustration