So You Must Stand Before the Painting

The same you've passed by ten thousand times
On your way to the bathroom or to shower
Or to cry on your knees in your bedroom at the senselessness of things
At the weeping hour
Or, removing your clothes, slowly, thrilling to the possibility of hands knowing you and the hope of being held

You must stand
Before the painting you had no money for and had no business buying and
Saved six months for, never eating out or going to the movies once
The same which you have now not looked at in six full years, except for seeing it as a lack of absence, out of the corner of one eye

You must stand before its pigments and its brushstrokes now and
Notice how they rise around you 
And you must let them fall about you, like a nakedness enfolding you

It will take a good minute before you begin to see
Though you knew it back then, so it will be almost like remembering:
It will dawn on you, slowly, like a winter breeze
Like a sapling from an unintended seed

You can make it down that path, like a mouse running to find warm comfort in the earth
But since you are so out of practice, you must stand before it, first, and learn humility
Then, only after,
Will you be asked to speak

By then, you will know better than to hang words on anything,
And though you’ll have the words for what you knew and know again
You will know more now,
And you will simply see and let things be
Without the need to say a thing