A Day It Didn't Look Like My Painting

Back in Jeju,

I went out
and looked a long time.

The sea.

The low houses.

The bent trees.

I came into the room
and painted.

The brush
did not stall.

The tree I used to paint came out.

The light too

went the way I had long known.

It was not

a wrong painting.

Only,

it was not the Jeju

my body had met.

I turned the painting
to face the wall.

The next day

I took it out again.

I cut away

a little of the canvas.

Painted, erased.

Painted again,
erased again.

Wherever the paint was lifted

the weave of the cloth showed.

When evening came

I gathered the scraps of cloth on the floor
to one side.

Among them

was one small piece of cloth.

Nothing
was painted on it.

The scissors had cut
crooked.

I

spread that cloth on the floor.

I pressed its folded corner

flat with my palm.