(I've waited to catch these drifting words,
this chrysalis,
this airborne concept, twisting in my mind, relentless,
like a tumor, like an unrequited love).

Eyelids settle like cotton throws -
listen,
just listen.
This idea, this thought, spoken so simply,
just a statement, a synesthetic silence.

(Does your silence sing? And is it black, like the backs of my eyelids?)

I cannot catch them, your bursts of light
and sound, undulating D chords and starburst E's
that splatter like paint in your musician's mind's eye.
I cannot catch them, your method and your madness,
this swirling palette of sky blue and flame orange,
leaf green and wildflower violet

(It is deep summer in Lowertown; the air smells of ice and drying paint)

that crash and crescendo and repeat,
syncopated and symphonic and surreal,
so surreal to me, who allows languages textures

(French bubbles off the tongue, effervescent as an aged champagne; Spanish melts, smooth and sensual, like chocolate)

but cannot for the sake of my sanity
catch this,
this wavelength,
this intersection of matter and concept
that smudges like pastels, sweeping
like watercolors into something insubstantial
that passes through my senses as through a tight-wrung sponge.

Yet how easy it comes to you,
the artist,
whose enchanted fingers dance sound into color,
whose brave and terrible mind catches both
and, like a paintbrush,
drips them back onto the air's wavering canvas.

(I've waited for this,
the words for this vibrant, quaking chrysalis,
this unrelenting concept,
sound to color, color to words,
transference and transformation,
art to art to art).