Chameleons can paint themselves away
Into the colored canvas where they lie
Until they are a needle in the hay,
Until they are an outline to the eye.
An actress who’s the greatest in her class,
Who pours herself into the part she plays
And fills it like pure water fills a glass
So disappears, to ev’rybody’s praise.
The one becomes another not a twin.
The first has died to give the second life
By slipping into a disparate skin
With tailor’s ease or with a surgeon’s knife.
The face of Meryl Streep can still be seen
In parts she plays, but she’s not on the screen.
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© Dennis Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2015.
The Bard on the Hill 