Johannes Beilharz
	Samantha’s painting         for Les Murray Oh summer day & lilacs abound This is a Samantha day This is a day for easel outing, lunch packed in proper basket by Helena the maid, the old green MG out of the garage Oh but all forgotten the landscape The rolling hills of Pamphrey, that rush of the river Brooke This is a Samantha day And everybody’s there with her Each tube of oil is someone Wish I knew which green was me But light lilac I know is Samantha Light lilac flowers on off-white muslin Still life with tulip and chimneys Even though life’s like a still life today, what with chill, a sheet of incessant rain & this being a holiday, there must be motion somewhere behind each one of those still windows There must be Since I don’t have one, I imagine a tulip in the window, screaming vermilion – from hot sun rays soaked in – at the chimneys stuck up in today’s torpor There’s life somewhere, I’m sure of it Loving and free There’s nobody to tell you, and if there were you’d tell them to go to hell, you’re on your own, you’re your own man, and there’s opportunity out there, a wide field of it, you have only an inkling of its expanse. You’re on this freedom trip because you’ve severed something, an attachment you felt was a string, one whose tucking was in one direction only, and you were sick of the tuck. But that’s only one thing – think of verse, and its wide expanse. Now that’s freedom. You can do anything, and with the advent of computers you don’t even need paper. You need current, but that’s ok, everyone needs it nowadays, even though the same could be said of paper – think of toilet paper. Anyway, I’m free from the love business tonight as well, thoroughly sick of its ups and downs and pit- falls. What is true love? Is there ever more than one instance of it? Then a drop into cold water from that serenity, or into the scald of felt betrayal or foolishness. This is freedom. Take it now. You’ll leave it again too soon, when this belligerence is over – as it will be, just like everything else that will always be over – in an instant, tomorrow, when some- thing else comes up, when you betray love, when you betray freedom.