Trapped in the Met

Two women
in light shawls
among wildflowers
have forgotten themselves
across their foreground field
like a wind of petals

	* * *

At the last 
of the zillion quiet moments 
since

a hair
of the master’s paintbrush
tickled its cheek

that precarious one apple
on the bottom tier
of the crowded apple tetrahedron

will, is going to, 
at long last, now? will it?
slip from the plate, bounce off the tabletop, fall to the floor, and demolish,

like a stone into still water,
the last quiet moment
of Cézanne’s Still Life with Apples

	* * *

I need out of here.
I suffocate for air.

A sign says EXIT
just where I expected it,

as if a friend were to offer
a glass icewater,

down the grand Y of marble stairs
and out the heavy bronze doors.

It’s winter out,
sun low in the south,

the banister pole is going to feel
ice cold in my inside hand.

	* * *

Four knights in  armor
and full-head helmets
with pointy noses

mounted on patient
but ever ready
iron-clad palfreys.

Deep in this medieval night
a young docent
stands in wait.

“To Ancient Greece
then left 
and left again at Socrates

through European painting,
to the stairway.”
Pointing.

	* * *

White pants,
white vest, 
in a dark, blue tailed, 
brass-buttoned tunic,
the signature tricorn in hand
clueless doll's eyes.

“Our little Napoleon,”
maman gushes,
peeking across the frame,
dapping dry
a tear of rich delight

	* * *

Madonna and Child,
Madonna and Child,
Madonna and Child,

Madonna and Child,
Madonna and Child.
Jesus Christ.

	* * *

A smiling young woman
in a bright purple cloche
contemplating

a bearded old man 
kneeling in shadow.
Rembrandt's “St. Jerome in Prayer”

I need out of here.

	* * *

“Down the hall, left at the satyrs
right and right again,
a bank of elevators,

left at Aphrodite,
to a boulevard marching soldiers.”
Left right left right right.

The sun low in the south
shining up Fifth Avenue,
a brisk wind of light.

	* * *

On wings of a spare
Quattrocento cherub, 
I’m dying for a breath of air,
dizzily cornering 
right angles, right angles, to a fare thee well,
but encountering only, e.g.,

Saxon tapestry
Crimean estuary
Chinese snuff bottle
Islamic kettle
Panama hat
Egyptian amulet
African priest,
whizzingly past
Mexico, Sri Lanka
America, America

	the Met’s impossible labyrinth of everything

Iraq and Afghanistan.
Cézanne?