On a cool spring day in May, I found myself in one of my favorite places to be in Boston when not in a coffee shop or Fenway Park. I found myself in a gallery in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. This day in a small gallery off to the side, centered in front of a new painting to me was a couch. I sat down, rested my feet, and began staring at the scene in front of me. Gradually it became familiar to me, while different in some ways, it was recognizable from the several times I had trodden across that area — the Boston Commons. As I sat, I felt a desire to sit for a while and to help me linger slightly longer I pulled out a notepad and a pencil and began to write words. The whole goal was just to sit and write some notes to remind me of the serenity that was somehow reaching across time through that canvas to me on that couch. And about twenty-minutes later, there on that pad, were these words, in the form of a poem.
You know … you could do it too.
As I sit behind his easel
My view above his shoulder
The shoulder that guides
The brush to glide
Through the eyes of Childe I see
The snow both piled and trodden
The path before his feet
The feet that point
His eyes to see
A small child is viewed by Childe
Eyes to travel across the scene
Towards that glow of orange
The people that move
Beneath the trees
Childe Hassam has forever captured
I turn my back to Childe that day
My thoughts to travel back
More than strokes
Of paint I have
I have thoughts that will inspire
My thoughts inspire a restfulness
A smile moves across my face
The quietness seen
in fallen snow
I’ve sensed in these confines
The Curious Table 