Grace Chia
A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Child
The butterfly outgrew the child
in the drawing my daughter did —
a caterpillar frozen in motion;
long turd green, pink lips, curled limbs,
his turn next to bear wings.
A daisy of carmine
salutes a bendy tree,
brown-barked with lime leaves,
ochre sacs of round fruits
pregnant with spindly secrets
the tuft bush can’t hear, its twigs
daubed red with a brush too big to
fit its shape while a citrus sun
peeks from the edge of the paper
at right angles, seven sticks of rays
proclaiming summer.
In this, I catch my daughter’s proxy,
a wild-haired imp with two seeds for eyes,
moon mouth, hair in a top knot
of burnished terracotta,
purple tunic and twiggy thighs.
She is small-sized amidst the giants,
the bonsai palm, the lemon star,
leaping without shadow above the
mustard ground, azure coloured
in for both air and sky.
I see she has crayoned in the
heaven around her, clouds
a hair’s breath away,
the artist herself afloat in blue.
This is the world my daughter creates,
no lines separate her will from the real;
no one has taught her how not to draw
or where horizons end and start,
what is allowable in dreams
or how her eyes should learn
the gaps between spectrums.
The young are colour blind.
All children see rainbows
no matter rain, shine, snow or storm
in every pale wing, broken or torn.
