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A painting bought cheap at the thrift store,
The cloth matting soiled with oil and grime,
Stains of another place, from another time,
By others who beheld and loved it before.
A Montreal winterscape when life was hard,
Painted in ‘38 by an artist long-ignored,
The gathering sorrow of Europe is fore-
Shadowed, our city rendered in graveyard
Tones; rust, muted blues, greens and greys,
Rooftops swathed in thick chimney smoke,
Ramshackle wooden balconies bent and broke,
Tenements of sacrifice and malaise.
Today our preoccupation is decor,
Choosing from an assortment of frames,
Columns of hung parentheses, many the same,
Initial thoughts of matching walls and floor.
Then a word surfaces about what the artist meant,
His travails, a certain responsibility moves us
To deeper levels, we begin to discuss
Other dimensions—take of ourselves a measurement.
The framer waits impatiently as we mull our choice.
I lean in, share with my wife our sweet secret,
She smiles, the framer fails to interpret.
She tells him to make us an invoice.
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