THE ARTIST AT NIGHT
by Ellen Davis
In the indecipherable hour,
what is this art that you cultivate?
Each sculpture takes something
out of you. With each new figure
another eye or heart gone.
Is night absence? Or a presence
more haunting because it’s like death?
Where do you go when you’re at work
and is that your true studio? It isn’t here,
the way it appears to the others,
next to me. It’s in some empty room.
where a door swings open into the dark,
a vacuum. You take up your work
with attention. And in that room
I am as nothing.
Copyright © 2009 by Ellen Davis.