In the Water Lily Room, at MoMa

crowds enter to shuffle

face time with genius, but wonder

staggers to a seat

some fairy glade, long since

grown over and glad of a far-flung

morning, time stopped

room of other Edens.

One afternoon, we dipped into

this pool ripple, the earth walls

held, from France,

so far removed, made new

to us, now, in America

sat drinking in, the whole

hushed room, drunk, still

drinking, the water at one remove,

lily pads float the colours,

dance and ride and the sunlight

brings us to where we are dreaming.

---

Note from the poet The poem is about taking time to sit with Monet's Water lily paintings, they are works we all kind of know but the scale of them was unknown to me before I actually saw them in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMa) in New York, placed on the walls in one enormous room they surround you and just take your breath away. Monet's painting of the water is incredibly real and it takes you to a place that is very relaxing and hard to pull yourself away from, they definitely cast a spell and you float out afterwards with rose-tinted view of the world that lasts the rest of the day.