Pink Hat

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Here's another abstract painting by Sylvia, which is great fun to look at. It has a Japanese quality to it - I imagine if Hokusai were to have made abstract prints they would look like this.
My poem takes off from the image and goes to places I didn't expect.
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Pink Hat

Silly,
ignored as a child, drew fantastical pictures
of creatures in unnatural crayon colors.
Now, she wears bright cotton dresses
in lemon and orange, ruby and sapphire, and
a pink picture hat. Dressed such a way,
she paints to please the child inside.

The hat transports her to other places in other
times – once to the Paris of Breton and Eluard,
where she rode a balloon with a small man
in plaid: he touched her knee: she didn’t mind:
once to Ireland where ghosts appeared
from passage tombs to greet her
with voices like soft summer breezes.
In Africa, a dangerous man in khaki
and rifle put a pink diamond in her hand
and told her to run – which she did.
“Hold on to your hat,” he had shouted.

Then she vanished. No one knew how –
or why. She had traveled to her own childhood
and decided she loved this girl she used to be:
she would become the imaginary friend
she once had imagined and guide the girl’s
growth and when she ripened into bright colors
she would give her the pink hat of her dreams.