Soul Notes

Sketches

Rough angular charcoal hands grip thick burnt-brown pencil

Nick, nick, penknife sharpens off the wood edge to expose a wide lead tip

Focused moments on crosstown buses catch flattened heads turned window ward

Cloudy faces that stare in stillness as New York streets roll past

Existence etched in spiral bound books brought from Sennelier in Paris

Glimpsed in a second Drawn for eternity

Evening stroll along the Bowery the stench of ordure no bother

Heads bent skyward from cardboard cages New York winos make quick studies

Upturned faces incised with furrows, filth and scars,

Pictured through his perceptive eyes he grasps each soul

Forges their despair by smudged fingers that glide them into shapes

Rub lines into safe keeping with thumb shadows and soft dark profiles

Glimpsed in a second Drawn for eternity

Now five decades later Those souls live here in these sketch books

My own soul attached to the sketcher creator

Caretaker that I am of dozens of sketches and a hundred drawings

I feel his restless spirit as I recall those faces on our bus rides and Bowery strolls

Each one respected by a graceful curve of double chin or dimpled cheek

Broken glasses or package secured by tired arms

Graphic images suffuse the space where they sat or lay down

Leaving visual links to each living soul

Glimpsed in a second Drawn for eternity

Sketches

©Linda Tobin