The Artist to Her Daughter

by Judith Sornberger

from the painting Candice with a Bird by Christiane David

Since love alone can’t heal you,
I create this prayer
in blazing hues,

nestle you in the gold
chair’s velvet nap, and wrap you
in a poppy-red comforter.

To warm your head—naked, for now,
as a baby bird’s—I paint you
this wild garden of a turban.

In the nest of your palm, I place a bird.
May her crimson, aubergine, and lemon
feathers—and the throbbing

of her tiny heart—cheer you.
When her beak cracks open
in a hymn hopeful as sunrise,

may your rose-gold lips
part to join her. One more touch
now as I brush

the blush of health
across your cheeks
and say amen.

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Judith Sornberger is the author of five full-length poetry collections, including The Sorority of Stillness: A Gallery of Women in Art, forthcoming from Shanti Arts in 2025. Her six chapbooks include the prize-winning Wal-Mart Orchid (Evening Street Press). Her prose memoir, The Accidental Pilgrim: Finding God and His Mother in Tuscany, is from Shanti Arts. Sornberger is a professor emerita of Mansfield University of Pennsylvania and lives on the side of a mountain outside Wellsboro, PA.