Life Imitates
Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, NY
We knew some of it was sculpture,
the marbles and mobiles. The bronze
diptych, two doors standing upright
and open, hinged to one other, yoked,
a book, each of its opposing pages
the other’s negative, each a collage
of wedge and gouge so perfect
we never did decide which was
the mold and which was the cast. Yes,
and the wall was a sculpture, halving
a hill, unless it was us, ascending
on our own sides; dry-stacked, it cut
through a pond; a heavy ribbon
when it slalomed a picket of oaks.
The benches were sculpture too:
on one, a groundskeeper left his gloves
or a weak-wristed god his hands,
they were larger than life, were they
sandstone? For hours, we were sure
all of it was art. A gully full of stake flags—
yellow for steam, purple for slurry,
surveyors’ pinks, plumbers’ blues—
it was an installation, new and near
the museum’s earliest gift, a mudrock
upholstered in moss. I’m telling you,
it was catching. I stared at the likeness
of a whistlepig and when she bounded
into the milkweed, I stood, astonished,
in her stead, next in a relay of statues.
But even now, cormorants are topping
utility poles with acanthus, and on full
trains tall kids are draping the laps
of mothers with tragical faces.