Self-Portrait at 30 by Peter Taylor

Legendary Figure, Cape Dorset Inuit Carving, modern, exact date not known.

Self-Portrait at 30
 
Saturday morning at the art gallery,
my daughter in the stroller after breakfast,
a chance to talk with no one around
thinking art is better
than cartoons or sleeping in.
 
Tastes vary. She adores
landscapes, tiny villages, tapestries,
Milne's delicate water colours,
anything with animals.
 
I prefer abstracts,
painting behind the painting
when the heart frees itself
and pours space.
 
We agree on sculpture,
taut shapes caressing
things we recognize or not.
 
The Inuit art on the third floor
is always last--
 
mythic animals
struggling in cut stone,
caught blood,
moments of light.

Peter Taylor

Peter Taylor has published Trainer, The Masons, and Aphorisms, and his experimental verse play, Antietam, won honourable mention in the international War Poetry Contest. His poems have appeared in Anansesem, Aperçus Quarterly, Call & Response, Contemporary Verse 2, Construction, The Copperfield Review, Descant, Eunoia, Fade, Forage, Frostwriting, The Glass Coin, Grain, Ink, Sweat & Tears, The Linnet’s Wings, Nether, Petrichor Review, Phantom Kangaroo, Pirene’s Fountain, Poetry Australia, Pyrta, and StepAway Magazine. He lives in Aurora, Ontario.