Nightingale/Meditation/Mutation

I am about to teach a lot of poems about birds, for some reason, I think perhaps to spend some time focusing on the function of metaphor? Anyway, the first of these is Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale," which is a weirdass poem. Speaking of weirdass, a couple of months ago I decided to make a painting that had words in it, in the form of a very loose meditation/poem of some philosophical and spiritual desperation, as follows:

Where is my beautiful colour?

Where is my perfect thought?

Where is my clear mind?
It was a nightingale.

I have since partially obscured part or all of some of those words, to make the meditation , and the nature of the struggle as well perhaps, more elusive, perhaps like the bird itself. Here is what happened when I did that:

I like that the words are now obscured, and not only because I'm embarrassed by my script. The suggestion of words is sometimes much more interesting than the words themselves, and I've been in mind of Frank O'Hara's "Why I Am Not A Painter" lately, along with all of those sardines that may or may not have shown up. And now the questions about the beautiful color, the perfect thought, and the clear mind are embedded in the painting itself, which seems appropriate. Questions buried, answers buried, meanings obscured. Yes, yes, and yes.