On Drawing Again

Short, free-verse poem

For ten years I don't pick up a pencil,
The supplies charged --
A gateway to someplace dangerous.
The time lost, the absorption
Far more than my grown-up life can bear.

I had thought once, grandly,
"I will not draw another portrait
Until I have fallen in love." Knowing, There.
That will buy me some time.
Meanwhile I doodled in lectures, later in boardrooms
Houses and faces and fruits, half covered with my hand.

Then
a switch tripped --
A new and God-given sense of daring
Leads me back there again.
Daring to dip into a time and a self
Back in her bedroom, who never worried about the bills
Who had dinner waiting, and someone to tell her
When to go to bed.
The well still deep and undisturbed.
And unquestioningly mine.