THE INKBLOT CAMEO

INK BLOT

She began to run at seventeen,
and never stopped.
She left her parents first, then boyfriends,
live-ins, husband, roommates;
the pattern was not long in establishing.

Each time she went she knew not from what,
but only that it was toward
whatever she was looking for,
and had not yet found.

She had a gift for making friends,
and this made each leaving much more difficult,
but she'd go, and she would sweat
like a mother giving birth,
her short hair drenched,
and wetness flying from her head.

Once an artist drew a sketch which
then became a cameo
upon a sheet of white;
her brow was long and slightly furrowed,
her nose turned up.
her frantic pace of quest
for she knew not what seemed
to encompass the entire sheet.

It reached out like
a blot of ink on a full brush,
thrown with force and landing safe.

She went and went, and at last,
unable to continue,
she came full circle to her friend
who'd drawn the cameo.

"The Inkblot Cameo" he had named it
when he'd shown at galleries,
and she still quite resembled the young girl,
her brow no shorter, nose the same,
her chin and neck as smooth and long as then
(the wrinkles didn't show in the blot of ink).

Ths piece of art would be buried with her,
resting in her folded hands,
the ink faded into shadow.
Her life had been like a Rorschach test,
a different kind of inkblot, yes,
but therefor all to see and comment.

The perspiring cameo had caught her best,
and the hidden copy that he'd kept,
the ink blot still at its newest,
became a famous photograph of the great
adventuress who, now with her memories
of her many loves and dangers met,
and of her predicting portrait,
did what we all do in the end: she slept.