The Architectural Institute, Rotterdam

Through the distorted forest I see you smiling,
The sunlight behind your shoulder has grown
To lighten the world and its twisted forms.
All kinds of desires smudge the trunks
And the Netherlands Architectural Institute has become a mask
Like Munch's Scream.
Behind the pitted surface of the dream
We are standing, observing time and its strange displays,
The accidental beauty of the half-intended,
Weathered lines and acidic splats,
Tears in the surface of our lives,
All these show through, but we are behind them,
They obscure us but cannot hide what's true,
How we survive and make our happiness
In spite of the destruction of the surface
We are not damaged and live on,
'Forever young', our backs turned
Toward the creaking hickory farmstead.

This could almost be Pollock's canvass,
The splats on the surface, the whirling lines,
Forms emerging organically and at random from time.
But this is not growth, it's decay,
We froze it on our way, while passing
From the station to the bridge,
Your smile showing, mine hid.
You cannot tell what is surface, what is depth,
The major lines become trunks,
The sky becomes the knotted grain,
And we do not see nor care about the monsters
That lurk behind my shoulder,
Since the Rotterdam sky will always be blue,
The Museum Plein sunny, your smile becomes you
But my obscurity only reveals me
When we develop what I see.