Self-taught

is what they call artists who didn't go
to art school or take a single formal
art lesson in their lives. And yet
visions in their minds took shape
in clay or burst open with oils 
on canvas. Grandma Moses pieced 
her quilt-square landscapes, Van Gogh 
his bending wheat fields and vibrant 
yellow-green interiors. Fingers   
listened to every shape and shadow 
in the world. A tarnished teakettle 
on a windowsill is no accessory— only 
part of the equipment of daily life. 
Tea sets with missing cups. Mismatched
plates, silverware from yard sales;
armchairs covered with oily antimacassars
pressed to stiffness from the light 
of countless afternoons. Isn't this how 
you've always learned— figuring it out 
one trial at a time, as if from memory 
before it becomes memory? The lesson:
you prepare for joy the way you prepare 
for sorrow. How to stand without flinching
as orchids and velvet moths circle your head
and a black monkey coils a necklace of thorns 
around your neck, from which a dead hummingbird
with wings outspread now dangles like a pendant.   

~ after "Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and 
Hummingbird," Frida Kahlo (1940)