She is sixty-five
And she is magnificent
She plays with her grandchild
like a little girl
And smiles at her husband
with an intensity
that makes those watching them
look away, reddening
Gabi smiles
Sketch
This was the sketch, back when it all begun.
The basic concepts:
Vanishing point, parallels
vertical lines, diagonals
Our angles, all goodwill and disobedience
ready for a full day’s toil
with unreasonably good humour
A demanding, none-too well described job
performed in the best company
and fueled by the worst possible diet
We follow the sketch, changing and evolving
The main idea emerging from the chaos
increasingly defined, if somewhat tired
Growing simpler, more focused over time
– although baroque episodes still occur
every so often, without warning –
Then it all changes, the sketch is now a scene
Nevermore a page, but a stage
Two people holding hands
Their eyes fixed at some point behind the audience
Behind them in chronological order
you can see all the stages of the sketch
Their feet sinking in the hazy ground
– In close examination, not a fog
but microscopic copies
of their relationships and their worldly possessions –
In the background a new sketch appears
Opening as a new flower of the present
To Gabi, the hand always in mine,
Victoria, September 20th, 2025
Victoria, September 20th, 2025
Rainy day with bird
It feels just as grey as the grey rain
That the rain shall still be here
when I am gone
That the birds that cower in the trees
shall be here as well when I am gone
For each rain is the same rain
each bird the same bird
Building blocks of the perennial
“Rainy day with bird” tableau
And every observer is the same observer
as it watches the rain fall
from behind a pane of glass
There are endless iterations
of watchers, feathers and droplets
But merely a single flicker
of our particular soul
A miraculous self seeing the world
in a particular manner
Loving, hating other miracles
in a particular way
At the particular end
of a miraculous journey
Victor Alejandro Wainer
Victoria, BC
August 30th,2025
Her World
Her World
Her World
She tells me these fantastic stories
With her voice, her eyes
And with her flying hands
Of things she lived
Movies she saw
And tales she heard
And I can see them, live them
As if I’d been there
Or she grows quiet and
She grabs her brushes
She shows me stories
In colours and lines
Worlds that burrow themselves
Under my thirsty skin
And I can spend hours on end
Getting lost inside of her
And when she sleeps
She offers dreams
Punctuated breath and
Twilight shapes
Imagined tendrils of her world
That leave me standing on the outside
I could just give away my world
Were I assured to live in hers
Victor Alejandro Wainer, Victoria, BC. August 2025
The Maps of Men
She fought slept under the white sheets
Parts of her flesh rebelling
Against the straight lines
Of their moonlit bed
He dreamt up a map
Of her unexplored territories
Knowing full well there wouldn’t be
Enough time to visit them all
“If only I had more time”
He though – and then he smiled
“She’d have more lands to explore,
She’s endless”
The sheets fluttered and levitated
A white arm appeared beneath them
Searching for him
So he went back in, to chart some more.
We map what we love,
our countries, our homes, our bodies
And we also map what we fear,
The infinite oceans of the earth and sky
That is why we map women
In our paintings, our poems, our songs
We map to find the way
From us to them, and back,
And back again.
Victor Alejandro Wainer,
Victoria, BC, 1st of January, 2024