TIM SUERMONDT

The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Tim Suermondt

I Love Seeing Them

The great paintings in a museum,
that is, thinking I could have painted
a slew of them just as well, which

I do know is ridiculous.
A woman next to me takes off
her headphones and says “You should

try the audio tour, it’s fantastic.”
I tell her I might and when I turn again
to the wall, there I am walking

with the philosophers as we discourse
while filing out of the marble rotunda.
Plato pays close attention as I punch

a point home with a beautiful insistence.
I look silly in toga and sandals,
but I’m not worried. I can step out

of the painting. They can’t. They’ll
never meet this woman who could tell
them everything about it.

It Happened Only Once

But it stays with me still:
          my father and I
racing
          down a city sidewalk,
somehow not plowing
          into people along the way.
Absolute silliness
          from a man and a boy!
Nothing in the universe could
          have been better,
nothing.
I wish I hadn’t waited until
          it was too late
to tell him how lucky we were.