By Theresa Burns

Featured Art: Flowers in a Vase by Odilon Redon

And now, instead of staring at the weeds
and broken bottles from the train platform,
we’re taking in a scene from a Monet.
Asters, cosmos, little yellow fists
of something. All random and confetti.
I’m half expecting a lady in a high-waist
dress and bonnet to appear on a diagonal
stroll through its splendor, pausing
with her parasol so we can selfie with her.
Maybe she’ll hop aboard the light rail
to the Amtrak station, get off in D.C.,
step back into the painting she escaped from.
Who was the genius who thought of this?
What meadow-in-a-can Samaritan
got sick of passing the four-acre eyesore
on the way to work? Shook pity into blossom.
To whom do I write my thank you?
Mayor, surveyor, county clerk, church lady.
Who marched down to city hall, begged
anyone who would listen?

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Theresa Burns’s work has appeared in The New York Times, Prairie Schooner,
America Magazine, The Journal of the American Medical Association, The
Cortland Review, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize
and is the author of the chapbook Two Train Town. The founder and curator of
Watershed Literary Events, she teaches writing in and around New York.

Originally published in NOR 27