If................

In ethics class so many years ago

Our teacher asked this question every fall:

If there were a fire in a museum

Which would you save, a Rembrandt painting

Or an old woman who had’nt many

Years left anyhow? Restless on hard chairs

Caring little for picture or old age

We’d opt one year for life, the next for art

And always half-heartedly. Sometimes

The woman borrowed my grand-mother’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 herself?

Linda, the teacher would report, eschews

The burdens of responsibility.

This fall in a real museum I stand

Before a real Rembrandt, old woman,

Or nearly so, myself. The colors

Within this frame are darker than autumn,

Darker ever 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.

Poet-Anonymous