Afternoon the time. The season winter.
In the studio, light thick as cream
filters through a barely noticed window
taken for granted, as we do with daylight.
Behind the figure, a sketched mantelpiece;
in front of it a canvas
whose back we see—its wooden frame, its staples.
In the center of the composition
a face—intent, dark, female, more or less.
A left hand holds a brush up to the canvas,
hovering close to it but not quite touching,
poised to revise the image of a self.
That face both is and isn’t looking out at us,
is and isn’t looking at itself;
is looking and not looking both at once
into the frame, the mirror,
the window of the canvas, the red sweater,
that irreplaceable moment in the room
of which I am a witness,
that square of silence. Call it afternoon.
