The Artist

Art is all around us, you see

Yet it's so commonly mistaken

With mundane observations

Of moments lost to history

A history that maybe no-one will record

But art is a perception

It is a perception of the things around us

The things we do

And the way we do them

And the things we see

And the way we see them

And the way we see the things we do

An artist who fails to find inspiration

Is lacking what art requires most

A perception

An idea

A deeper thought on the mundane

A much deeper thought on some of it

We watch the bus drive by

And it averts us so swiftly as if

It almost has nothing to say

But the bus drives past

And neatly, almost perfectly

Evades the scene in which we stare

To reveal a building

Maybe an old building

That has been built and thought out

By artists

The creators of nothing

Who make something new

The bus evades the scene

And reveals the building

With it's shop signs

Signs of a business built from scratch

An endeavor some human felt necessary

In the quest to find what is

The many years of labor

The sweat and the tears and the dollars

And the failures and the upswings

And the family feature of it all

The name they wish to be remembered

Right there on the sign where the bus passed

My thoughts come alive

As I sit here across the road

Where I'm sat on a park bench writing

The tennis players who smoothly

Swing their racquets to meet the ball

That travels in a motion

Across the net

And onto the other side of the court

Where the other player has thought faster

And returns the ball

Across the net

To the back corner where she strikes gold

And gets another point

A game created for our entertainment

A rather simple one it may be

Yet difficult to master

As it requires skill

And it requires the artist

That is, the person playing

To create a better thought

And put it into action

Than the player on the other side

This takes effort

This takes creativity

This certainly creates meaning, too

Meaning, where there is none, of course

The ground before me vibrates so unnoticeably

That if I were to stand on it

I wouldn't know it was moving

IT holds in place

So tight

So still

That nothing can squeeze between it

Except of course a great piece of machinery

Much stronger than you or I

The leaves of the plants barely quiver

They barely shake

But they whisper

And move gently

With the slightest, cool breeze

And they let us know they're still here

I wonder if the leaves,

And the ground,

And the players

Would miss us if we were gone

For everybody needs to be observed

Observation is the only thing

That makes life real

So we think

Observation,

Perspective,

All the things that make us, us

And the things that make an artist swirl

For he shall always be inspired

The inside of a dark cave

Is inspiring to an artist

How could a beautiful world

Not be?