In the Art Gallery After the 2017 Fires - Judith Stone

[Larry Robinson]

In the Art Gallery After the 2017 Fires
 
Inside the gallery bright color is everywhere
as a medicine of happiness or as
a uniquely distilled garden.
 
Outside evening streetlights start
to come on. Safe in here
we remember together the fierce
walls of fire that can, and have
taken so much, from friends.
 
Not like the golden flowers of light,
in the twilight streets, warm like stars,
but closer, like tiny camp fires
warming nearby hands and hearts
warming the darkness and
making it friendly and soft as velvet.
 
A  knowing fortune teller thinks it best
to let this moment be. Next winter’s
flooding will come soon enough, and
make a lake of these streets. Children
in  kayaks will float by like water lilies.
This gallery and all its gardens of color
will be exiled in rising water.
 
 
	- Judith Stone