The Gallery

A stack of framed poems
leans against a well-lit wall
at the back of a painting,
like a layer of clouds
beneath a skylight,
each of the five poems
in a heavy black frame of emphasis.

It’s moving day
into a Dutch kitchen,
into an Italian atelier, under a Mansard roof
brass ladles and copper-bottomed pots,
a cleaned rabbit, scullery basket of potatoes,
a clan of obese clouds.

First thing, I hang the poems in a row
over the pots and pans, over the bloom
of detail, where they act as emphasized clouds
while the melon mentioned in the last
rolls away from a still-life.