Sterling Warner
Fleeting Opus
Ancient artisans gather at soup kitchens
share avant-garde oddities, sketch
chalk portraits on porous sidewalks
temporary masterpieces washed clean
at nightfall, redrawn at dawn
like Buddhist monks meditating,
thoughts deeply focused as they
patiently construct sand mandalas
to destroy upon completion
both reminders of life's impermanence
healing distracted minds, purifying
intent, connecting temporal gifts
to visual clues, testaments to time
immortalizing craft and conviction.
Bio
An author, poet, educator, Sterling Warner's poems have appeared in many international literary magazines, journals and anthologies, including The Flatbush Review, The Fib Review, Metamorphoses, The Ekphrastic Review, Visual Verse, Street Lit: Representing The Urban Landscape, and The Atherton Review. Warner has published six collections of poetry: Without Wheels, Edges, Shadowcat, Memento Mori: A Chapbook Redux, Rags & Feathers, and Serpent's Tooth: Poems. In August 2020, Warner further published Masques: Flash Fiction & Short Stories, his first collection of prose.