The Silent

Ethics

in ethics class so many years ago

our teacher asked this question every fall;

if there was a fire in a museum

which would you save, a Rembrandt painting

or an old woman who hadn't many years left anyhow?

Restless on hard chairs

caring little for pictures or old age

we'd opt one year for life, the next for art

and always half-heartedly. Sometimes

the woman borrowed my grandmother's face

leaving her usual kitchen to wander

some drafty, half imagined museum.

one year, feeling clever, I replied

why not let the woman decide for herself?

Linda, the teacher would report, eschews

the burdens of responsibility.

This fall in a real museum I stand before

a real Rembrandt- the old woman,

or nearly so, myself.

The colors within this frame are darker than autumn,

darker even than winter- the browns of earth,

though earth's most radiant elements burn

through the canvas.

I know now that woman and painting

and season are almost one

and all beyond saving by children.