Museum in Winter
Mary Winters
You call it New York's most
appealing building:
Guggenheim Museum's plump
white spiral all circles, arcs,
a ramp to Heaven no one would
dream of leaping from -- even
the bathrooms perfect -- so
you said it's worth $7.00
admission for half an hour.
That museum your ticket to fame
as a cartoonist if only you'd
send it in: vacationing
New Yorker a-stroll on a
foreign beach brakes to
grab up a seashell -- it's the
museum made tiny, exact in
calcium carbonate; maybe she
wonders which came first. But
that late afternoon your mind was
on friendship; the possiblity of
a new one to be exact. Were you
any good at it anymore. Sensed
love of a painting in the voice of
a German-speaking tour guide; saw
a perfect winter sunset of faded
orange and blowing gray over
Central Park out the porthole near
the Calders; saw people together --
they strolled and talked; touched
and talked; sat down to rest and talk:
could it ever be worth it again.
