Nancy Scott
Canvas
The wall phone hangs silent, its orange-
tipped antenna reproaching me. I haven't
spoken to Aunt Sylvia since Easter.
She's eighty-three. What if she's dead?
The attic on Quimby filled with stacked canvas:
oils, pastels, collages, loaned to museums,
never for sale. These are my children, she said.
How can I part with them?
As a child, I spent every July with my aunt.
She called me princess, favored me above others,
until my father—her younger brother—died.
Unlike canvas she could breathe life into
with color and line, I'd become a reminder
of what skill cannot capture.
Bio
Nancy Scott is an artist and author of five books of poetry. Her most recent, On Location (March Street Press, 2011), is a collection of poems inspired by works of art from all over the world. Nancy is also the managing editor of U.S.1 Worksheets, the journal of the U.S.1 Poets' Cooperative in New Jersey. www.nancyscott.net