Art

Ivory mansions surveying their parks

hide works of art second to none.

Trespassing, I squint encased by sun:

the oils resemble breeze-block bricks

and still further away

like stains on flannelette.

I need to see their immaculate beauty

coral-snaking, begging me to approach and enter.

I smell the canvas, stroke the marble cooler than I thought,

revel in propinquity.

That same sun swathes my pavement café meetings with the genii,

discussing latest works of unconventionality,

cautioning against cheap stone –

suggesting more expressive hues.

I plan to make a banner reading:

Art Is For Everyone.

Rolled up in my attic somewhere is the cloth,

the paint is in the shed.

It will form the lynchpin of my campaign

to tour the country houses of the land.

Sometimes I dream it –

like an old sepia photograph –

billowing in the wind,

too distant to touch,

too precious to share.