Painter

It is as if each one had been sent to colour in the world,
and to do it between the showers of rain
so that colours will have time to fix themselves
on walls and pipes and window ledges.
When it rains the painters in their speckled overalls and spotty shoes
sit quietly in vans
with ladders like folded wings above them.
They drink white coffee with two sugars
and treat themselves to doughnuts from the local bakery,
sugared cinnamon.
At night they dream of edges of immaculate neatness.
They admire leaves and what autumn does to them.
Their lives are short, for each painted colour releases
a poisonous fume like a sigh
as it spreads and dries and makes our lives feel
deeply real.
The painters speak less and less
as the fumes take hold.
Their wives and children watch the painters going
like elves to another kind of existence.
You ask them what to do with leftover cans of paint
and they tell you it’s not easy,
for paint would stain the sea and kill the fish if you let it go.
There are places, deep and foul, where paint must go
when its colour is no longer favoured, they will say,
and you will feel they are the enemies
of the paint they love. Their elf hearts move inside them
at each slap of colour on a wall or fence or seedy chair.