Portrait of the Young Man as an Artist by Lucas Olson

Portrait of the Young Man as an Artist

by Lucas Olson

- Preface -

Here.

Here I sit.

Book at my feet,

storm rolling by above my window.

There is no better time to write,

I think

than in the evening

while nature happens upstairs.

It's a poetic occurrence,

that begs a poetic response,

begs the writer to write,

the reader to read.

“Now.” the thunder roars.

Yes, then.

Now.

- I -

Portrait of the young man

as an artist

Can the former

be the latter?

Young has connotations.

Youth, even more.

It doesn't call to teenagers

as much as to children.

To me at least.

To my ear

and eye

and finger.

It summons

what the young call young

The elementary

and the kindergarten.

Pouting on foam letters

because I annoyed my

best friend too much

But it's nothing in ten minutes

(When looking backwards,

all time ten minutes)

Because we'll run over rocks

and over a red wooden playground

(That's gone now

I used to have a splinter as a keepsake.

That's gone now too.)

Ten minutes later

we're around a spring pool

filled with tadpoles and April mud

In ten minutes

it's dried.

In another ten minutes

the park is gone.

In ten more

so is he.

Pulled

into a deeper Mass.

He's a different person now.

Of course, so am I.

The caster of the shadow of my former self

But it was nice while it was there.

I met him

when we moved in,

actually.

Into the light blue apartment

(like a castle to me then)

The rug was dark blue,

thick,

snagging.

I always scraped my knees on it.

There used to be

a bush in the front

(two actually,

but one was

the hornet's castle)

If you crawled under a break in the brush

(your knees squishing the

powder blue berries

into green juices)

you could climb through the web of branches

and peak into the outside

from your cavern of wooden arms.

It's gone now

(Both of them)

Pulled and tugged

from the place it called home.

To make room for patches of dirt,

I suppose.

- II -

I didn't want to include

my age in the title.

Seventeen

has connotations as well.

More apt to conjure images

of a magazine built on stereotypes

than of a young man with a notebook.

(Though it's not like I'm

the target audience)

That's the problem with

branding an age.

They've stolen a year of associations.

- III -

B is a loaded letter,

isn't it?

It's one that stings

and one that questions.

What is it to be?

Furthermore,

what is it to be a bee?

Though I suppose many of us know,

since it's hard to be a child

and not dance through a field thick with pollen

breathing in the smell of June.

(That's a smell right?

That's not just me?)

I know that I have.

I've stood in more June fields

than you can count on one hand.

I've stood in June fields in

August

and in

November

and in

February.

I've stood in June fields in

the pine forests

and

on grainy, sweating beaches.

It's not so much an actual place to me

as an idea.

A picturesque grassy field

fenced in by leafy trees

waving “Hello” as the wind prods at them.

This isn't somewhere real.

Not really.

If it is, it's uncommon.

It's a usurped memory.

The seeds of a whole forest

planted in our heads

perhaps by media

or

perhaps by evolution.

Whatever the case,

we've all run through Elysium

and come clear out the other side.

We forgot where it was,

so we just made more

and projected them on top of

other memories.

- IV -

Does the world

ever really get older,

if there are still young eyes looking at it?

It seems to age personally.

The 80 year old war veteran next door

certainly didn't live in my world.

Nor me in his.

His was a old world

with new things coming in

and trying to change it.

My world is new things.

My world is change.

But somewhere there is a newer world.

Where someone still doesn't know how it works.

Or how we think it works.

Or how I think we think it works.

Where there are still witches in the basement

and dragons in the attic.

And where your room can

still become a forest

if you think hard enough.

I can still turn things into a forest.

It's different though.

I have to describe the stretching,

snapping,

bedposts as they grow thick

and throw their rough limbs outward.

I have to describe the carpet,

as the light brown

melds into a darker one

and softens into earthy loam

thick with curling leaves

and orange needles.

I have to describe the walls,

as they melt away and fall into

the trees behind them

taking along the ceiling

leaving only damp leaves

and moonlight

in its stead.

I have to describe the air,

as it thickens

and deepens

and the smell of petrichor

and moss

begin to bleed into the oxygen.

I have to describe the sound

as the roar of cars

and the ring of speakers

tilts into moving water

and chirping crickets.

I can still do it.

It's different than before,

but it can be done.

I can put the thoughts in the ink.

But it may take a lot of ink.