Watercolor Artisan by Patty Zion

She has painted these Pennsylvania woods
every day of her life,
sometimes with her hands,
other times with her soul.
Today the frozen landscape calls again.
Confident of her art, she touches the chosen tools:
One fine sable liner for the branches,
A flat scrubber for the earth’s morning stubble,
A soft round for the blend of clouds and clear.
She adds watercolors in polite, tiny tubes:
burnt umber, thalo blue, yellow ochre.
She includes a jar of masking fluid
to preserve paperwhite light
for the glint of fine, frozen limbs.
She positions each treasure
into her camera bag, then thinks again,
whispers “Sim sala bim,”
and watches each item gliding into the lens.
Palette prepared, she ventures out
to snap the shutter
and bring life to winter on a single page,
mindfully unaware of the thousands of eyes
that will gaze—and fall in love.

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