The Painters View (memory of Fred Williams)

The horizon is sometimes there,
even a curved reference dividing
sky breath from earth body.
The colour of soil visible through the trees
which float above the translucent earth.
Fallen trunks like abandoned ideas.
Scale given by the stab of a brush,
there, and there, the mind of the artist
mimicking nature’s random purpose.
Years of comings and goings, drought,
fire and the rivers wriggling on their bed,
the silent music of a complex land.
Stories of water, sand, and fragile life
in the timeworn composition, the cantata
of the everyday is painted like
notes on natures blackboard.
The barely seen presence of man and animals
in a wide and colourful landscape,
they are there, not forgotten,
trees and rocks all significant
in the luminosity of this canvas world.