The Art Museum

I have a son who draws for hours every day.
His cartoons pour out of him.
Yet, when faced with the option of art museum or movie,
He would probably have opted for movie.
Except that I’ve been waiting to take him to a museum for years,
So to a museum we went.

And I had the baby in a carrier, so we couldn’t stay long,
Admiring (or not) the works of Maine artists,
The Rodin sculptures and the mobile by Calder,
The pots by Picasso and the paintings by Renoir.
I love art history, and I can talk my way through a museum.

A trumpet flower, three feet long,
Made, improbably, of enormous warped nails.
“What does this make you think of, son?”
“A whirlwind.”

A painting that looked something like a wire mesh,
With sections distorted by grabbing, as mesh does.
“Look at this closely—that’s one of the pleasures of a museum.
Son, see how the artist painted the canvas with a blue wash,
Then painstakingly painted each square or warped shape white?”
“Okay, I guess that’s pretty cool.”

A painted portrait of two children.
On the next wall, a photorealism painting of a room.
“I realize you walked by this quickly, but this is actually not a photograph.
This is a painting.”
The alacrity of attention then: the right response.