What Good Is Life Without Painting

I was participating fully in Life,
or so my calendar said,

when I had the spiritually extravagant
gift of being heart-struck,
standing before a painting.
Wow, everything I could see was different.
Now that’s art!I declared too loudly,

and the people on the patio heard me,
they were rearranged too,
chitchatting with Manhattans and old ideas,
they decided not to sell off the planet,

and the people in the time-share
were preternaturally glad to be a social organism,
as they rushed to their windows
and then to their email,
and they agreed upon an expedition
to a secret waterfall
(turkey on rye, swimming, awe)

and the people in the break room—
well, to be fair, only Mrs. Saunders,
who has had such a time—
decided to go to night school for social work.

The painting I was watching
change my future
was all green and all brown and all blue
at once. Feelings
happened there, and in me.
It was like being a plum, and ripening.