In the Portrait Gallery

In the Portrait Gallery

soot dark with coal fires & still births.
Thus was born stoicism & the Age of Exploration.

I lived that way for decades—
alternating between hermitage & pilgrimage;

the yin & yang of grim & grin.
Sure, the men in those paintings must have

waltzed at balls, fallen in love, laughed
despite a chronic, flaring abscess.

Absent biography, I can only guess their stories—
statesmen, husbands, slave holders, tycoons:

they all sit chisel-cheeked & upright.
Uptight. I know the young couple

rushing off for the stairwell, she leading, looking
over her shoulder, teeth light on her lip

in a way that is certainly about longing,
for I’ve been them, my young girlfriend

cooing, Prove you love me. How could I refuse
in that era when I’d confuse desire & eros?

Because theirs was the only happiness there
my eyes lingered until the doorway became another

frame on a portrait of a might-have-been life.
I’d like to mention the ecstasy of her

public touch, the waiting, the adrenaline &
endorphin crest, but really all I recall is how

––

I said her name, later that night & alone,
when I should have been arrested

in revelry, victorious in our daring,
but instead I stood, bewildered & 

brooding, in front of the window,
my night-reflection held in that frame.