Andrew Ray Williams

Such Is a Life

—After Portrait of Ria Munk III (1917-1918) by Gustav Klimt

Standing before a woman

scratched and oiled

into being,

hung, unfinished,

I think,

such is a life,

but the remark is

too neat.

Look, again:

flowers wilting

into bloom.

Andrew Ray Williams is a Virginia-based poet and author of The Silence That Answers Back.