Child Thai folk dancers 
                                    (credit: Wikimedia Commons)



The heart that yearns to make a thing so pure, 
To carve its curves and dance its moving sense, 
To sing its notes with words that will endure,
In harmonies unbearably intense ...

Is filled with aching, fearing making 
Things
Most surely and most finally empties 
Things. 

The aria is yelled at yawning toads. 
The ballerina stumbles and unloads. 
The staring, glaring portrait fades. 

Believe first in believing.
Only then, 
In one uncharted wing within your soul, 
I will be entering your secret den, 
The room where precious things are safe and whole. 

And look! A red oak harpsichord! Still tuned! 
A Strad, a music stand, a bacarole! 
A rare edition beneath a Renoir nude. 
And all arrayed about a blue-white gem. 
Exquisite, perfect beauty ...ah ...still gleams!

Where could we meet, we two, if we were rich? 
What gallery or trove could equal this? 


                                        
                                           (credit: Pierre-Auguste Renoir)
                                        (Wikimedia Commons)