Canvas

The canvas was visionary,
it had no signature
and was painted before
politeness. A picture,
not pretty enough,
leaving the unimaginative cold,
at a glance uncomfortable,
a feeling there was nothing
really there; moving on,
preferring a subject
full of likely explanations,
marked in bold, hanging on the wall,
something more dramatic, perhaps with talons,
motif after symbol after sign
constructing episodes
like stepping stones, going somewhere
and never to arrive.