Diego Rivera (1886-1957), Between Marriages to Frieda Kahlo, 1939

By Bruce Parker

There is a field of absence since you left
whereon to begin a painting, if only one knew
where to put the first stroke, if one dared to take color
on one’s brush and begin, somehow. A canvas once vibrated
with coming strokes of color; now it lies like an empty field,
all that nourishes harvested, bare,
waiting for the plow to bite, for seed, for rain.
I hold my brush and hesitate, look over the
field of absence, search for a place for presence
to begin again. Since you left, where to begin?