Found Art

Found Art

Now let us praise the discretion
of houses. Had the painters not come
with their sloshing buckets
and grunted the piano
from its immortal corner,
your lost drawing
pressed against the wall
might have gone on hiding
another decade or two more.

And somehow I would have had to manage
without this red smudge
on crumpled paper,
though I can't think how
or why I find your picture
a little less satisfying
now that we've noticed
this penciled-in title, informing us
that what you hold is not a flame,
not a flamenco dancer
spinning on her head,

but a tulip: embryonic,
held intact, but for a layer
of dust, behind the upright piano
where the two of us
used to pound out Chopsticks
when company arrived

in those days before we knew
that even the smallest things
we said and did
were all bright coins
dropped by accident:
nostalgic bait for our older selves.