Cruising around the World Wide Web <br />Checking on who was stealing poetry <br />On the Russian site I noticed on the side column <br />'The Sea' <br />A strange event to break a grief open and prompt a poem. <br /> <br />I regret I did not go to Bob Nally and commission a portrait of the sea <br />When I had the money from being quite prepared to help blow up the world. <br />There is some art that makes you ache with its reality. <br />Bobby was a Gloucester boy he knew the sea <br />His Father took my Dad to the gallery where an enormous canvas hung that he had done <br />Though I was very young still I swear that despite the air conditioned comfort <br />I could taste the ocean from the oils on that canvas <br />Feel its setting sun upon my skin. <br />It is a sin I did not act. <br /> <br />The Monet is of 'La Pie' a giant poster from the Louvre gift shop <br />It rests on the mantle over our humble fire place in land locked Texas <br />It is nice but it does not breathe of salt air, or a screaming seagull ghost, <br />And a world whose terrors my father escaped and I never knew - the sea <br />Probably a nice place to visit <br />Yet this wound is still to heal along with such other cowardice <br />As not humbly asking a girl named Sandy to marry me <br />All this - back when dinosaurs walked upon the earth.<br /><br />Bill Grace<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/requiescat-in-pace-valentine/
