Old Christmas Cake
We watched them working together
on two of those paintings at the
dinette table, a pair of black
horses in a field, with, we think,
a waterfall in the background
of one of them and a forest
of jack pines in the other. They
were pleased with their work, putting the
finished paintings in wood frames and
hanging them in the dining room-
the dinette- a diagonal
arrangement, over which they fussed
endlessly. We know, we know – don’t
give us stink eye - those kits were all
the rage and we can still smell those
tiny pots of oils, see two
artists, if that’s what you call them,
create their magnum opus, if
that’s what you call it, all part of
a rare, golden moment. We’ve kept
those horse paintings. They’re somewhere in
an oubliette, a hidden drawer,
a secret cupboard under an
old Christmas cake, not easy for
you to find. Eventually,
they broke apart, the pieces that
is, but we saved them - isn’t that
the living end? What value is
the elusive sweet memory
from childhood? What would Proust say?”
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