There’s This One

The lights flicker in the museum.
Neon. A slight buzz electrifies the air.
“The Future Will Be Confusing.”

Well. Duh.
But then, that is part of the beauty.
It is what keeps you alive.

You peer in the museum door.
Art. Some strange. Some sublime
lines the walls. Sits in the floor.

There’s this one, a horror tale,
Brugel and Dali gone mad,
Too real for our times. It hurts to watch.

There’s this one. Mondrian. Colors and lines.
Geometric perfection, hard to uncover
in art as well as life. No wonder you are drawn in.

There’s this one: A young girl with daisies. Renoir.
Innocent and erotic. A moment that could have been captured
from your own life. They all are.

You blink and see one. You blink and see another.
Each of them too close. Each of them too real.
Each of them speaking in a language without words

to the past.
To the future.
To the moment.

About this poem.

One of the things I love the most is going to museums. Even familiar ones, where I can visit artwork that over the years have become old friends, able to say what I can’t, neither in my words or in my art. I miss that more than I can say (though not being able to say something has never kept me from trying.) and look forward to going again.

The picture was taken at the Metropolitan Museum of Contemporary Art in NYC, from a visit 2 years ago, long before the plague year began.

Tom