PAINTING MUSIC
It’s like painting music
splattering the music
The wind carries it
Playing it softer
I’m pushing my vines
swinging the colors
Beautiful birds
Colorful flowers opening up
and spitting out the sky
and pulling in the moon and the stars
The blue and purple
My hands are imprinted in the trees
My colors coming alive
Turning into animals of all sorts
My favorite is the tiger
with long streaks of every color
In its head, a metallic blue
that matches the sky
White, fluffy clouds touch the horizon
as animals leap, touching it,
turning them pink like the sunset
as the flowers swallow whole the sun
like a vacuum
and instead spitting out the stars in shapes
as it sleeps
—from 2015 Rattle Young Poets Anthology
__________
Why do you like to write poetry?
Madeleine Shea Gerson: “Because it’s creative and fun and pretty and it makes me feel happy. It makes me think of things I wouldn’t normally think of.”