"I Know Where I Must Go"

On her knees, she scrubs floors by day, paints all night in a candlelit garret.  From some whirling nexus beyond her ken, flowers, fruits and leaves flow from her fingers onto canvas. Form and color rise up and dance.

oxblood,

candlewax, and herbs--

she extracts

essential pigments

from her narrow world

Starving while war boils around her, still she paints the stained-glass gardens of her soul. Someday her paintings will be exhibited in Paris and New York—yet Seraphine Louis will spend her last years in a madhouse.

visions and voices

from another realm—

an eye

embedded in the tree

of life

Haibun Today 7: 4, December 2013

Click here to learn more about  Seraphine Louis and see some of her paintings, including L'Arbe du Paradis, which is mentioned in the second tanka.