blank canvas

my uncle collects canvasses.
i think we all do. what do you hold on to
in the hopes that you will be someone you are not?
on his half of the house i grew up in
the canvasses are not hung on the walls but
leaning askew & piled on one another.
he buys more of them. stacks them.
sings to them. i wonder what they do
when he is not there. do they make promises
to one another? one day i will be
the face that you need. my father used
to lament my uncle's lack of painting.
what is an artist that does not make art?
i used to join my father. it did not make sense to me.
what were the canvasses for if not to create?
sometimes we need a vessel for our wanting.
to make a portal even if we know it will
not open. sometimes i buy notebooks 
just to leave them empty. i visited again
a week or so ago. stepped through my uncle's side
to see the canvasses still there. still dormant.
i want to ask him if he has ideas for them
or if they are mirrors. if he ever takes one
& waltzes with it in the dark. when i was small
sometimes i would beg him to let me paint on one.
once, he tried to show me how to paint flowers.
they were too stiff. he got frustrated with me, saying,
"that is not what flowers look like."
did he talk that way to himself? did he kill ideas
before they left his fingers? before he could
open his little tackle box of paints?
some nights when everyone in the world
is asleep, i will find a canvas in the yard. 
i will know it is his & that if i walked through it
i would end up in his room. the smell of 
irish spring soap. a tray with paint hardened on it,
little colorful mountains. my uncle, the size
of a paint brush, ambling alone between them.