1 + 2

1

at lunch, one Friday in March, a musician
reveals her recipe for classical guitar
... she says, take one tea bag, a little crazy glue
and a ping pong ball, pucture the ball with a pair
of scissors and cut a piece that precisely matches
the size of one's finger nail, then glue it on
(with the mesh from the tea bag layered in between)
... her conclusion: doesn't every artistic process
offer something ideosyncratically comparable?


2

today, something blue reminds me of the way
an etcher slowly slides a hard ground copper plate
into a nitric bath of blue and sits beside it,
keeping vigil with a feather, brushing bubbles
off the surface of every line as fast as they emerge,
to stop the acid from biting laterally,
knowing Rembrandt did this too