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Today's poem is by Elizabeth Scanlon

Miss Moore's Parlor Perfect to This Day
One takes a horse from the stable for the purpose of visiting a customary scene... it
is similarly that one goes to a museum to refresh one's mind with the appearance of
what one has always valued.

                              —Marianne Moore

Museums are inherently sad, Marianne—
those things highly valued locked away
from us, on display,
so as to get a clean shot at
the isolation to which we aspire.

But one tires of the velvet ropes,
the bored guard
in the corner wishing like hell
someone would make some trouble—
all appearances shifty in our memory.

Was the kiss always so small? What good
does peering on death masks do?
I am with you in these halls
and dislike (which is to say, love)
what I cannot live without.

So the horse trots along
till we return it rode hard,
are we refreshed? If only it were
all mind.



Copyright © 2006 Elizabeth Scanlon All rights reserved
from Gulf Coast
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission

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