In A Cafe, After The Orangerie

Drained, a thin February light slants
through the cafe window and falls
across the table. There's only so much beauty
anyone can take.

I feel I have resurfaced after time
submerged, upended beneath a sky of lilies,
clouds of colours almost obscene,
drowning beneath a canopy of flowers

and I am buoyant. Monet,
vision clouded by cataracts, brought me to tears
so that I saw the sea of colours through a veil, as he had.
Today anything is possible.

And here I am embraced
in a day that could accommodate such
known astonishments as art
comfortably alongside the ordinary world.

Like the light that now illuminates
an impossibly perfect cafe au lait and glints
off the glaze of a still-warm pastry.
There is, after all, only so much beauty.