Parliament

Standing so close, we can feel

the heat of the other, so close

I can hear the ticking of her 

wristwatch, even though

the gallery is almost empty

and there is a black leather bench

nearby; even though it is raining

terribly outside there is hardly anyone 

here, just her and I, 

before my favorite painting hung and lit

perfectly on a wall in the

Cleveland Museum of Art.

Turner's masterwork

The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons

has jarred me since I was a child and saw it in 

a book in my father's study. And here I am,

face to face with brilliance, and all

I can feel is her beside me, all I can see

is her from the corner of my eye, in a

black skirt and white blouse and black jacket.

The fiery orange of the painting might as well

be grey, might as well be a spackled wall left

by evicted tenants for all I am seeing of it.

There is no need for us to be standing so close,

but there is, and the silent hungers speaking

between us are making my heart race.

It's so alive, she says finally and I almost start, 

her voice pitched soft so only I hear her.

You can almost feel the flame, can't you, I reply.

She turns to look at me, I see in my peripheral vision;

I am looking at the painting now, really looking,

for the first time. It's my favorite painting, I say

to the air in front of my face. Then I look at her

and think that two years is not so long a time

to be with or without another.

Turner's painting is smudges and smears of color,

beautiful in that nothing is very clear,

and captures, as few are very capable of doing,

the moment when one era collapses in an instant

of surprise, before the new era is fully ready to emerge.

An hour later we were in my hotel room,

up against the wall, a mass-produced flora still-life

just above and to the left of the back of her head.

I'm tempted to say her ass is a work of art,

but I always do better in these situations

the less I say. 

In the bottom right of Turner's painting, 

spectators cram themselves into boats and 

line the Embankment to see the fire,

all wanting to witness what must have

seemed a world-historic catastrophe.

My hand wrapped in her hair, I close my eyes

and wonder how it must have looked to them 

on the shore, how certain they must have felt

that nothing would ever again be the same,

that the world was turned upside down,

and the old rules did not apply. Who would make

the laws now? Would there be anyone

who could tell them no, who could tell them yes,

who could tell them never again?