The gift, John Lyons (70 x 40 cm, oil on canvas)

Fabulous artificer
       artful dodger
visual charlatan
       allusive
illusion –
       shapes
out of all perspective
       a remembrance
of past things
       no rhyme or reason
school of primary colours
       what the mind sees
in the memory
       an image suffused
with chlorophyll
       the gravity of perception

How the light plays
       tricks of the trade
nothing new
       under the sun

So let it be
       a gesture of love
flowers bestowed
       an artless gift
to be hung in the heart
       of her home

John Lyons