A Canvas Follows Her Poem by Gordon R Menzies

I ask questions, make observations
her eyes follow the words floating
like cottonwood seed in the breeze
gathered like snow on the bookshelves
Sometimes she will not answer me
with words of her own, she will not
give her thoughts over to sound
my ears are cupped beggar's hands
waiting for coin that will not come
Her answers spill from her skin
and the scent of her on my own
if you scratch the words from it
letters rise in fragments, drift
You must lick the truth from her eyes
I talk and talk and her lips move
without making words of their own
fingertips make conversation there
as she moves through the world
the landscape behind her is canvas,
gold leaf, a spiraling halo, and wings
There is a sudden stillness in her
that tells me all I need to know