On My Way Back from the Art Museum, by Kristen Staby Rembold

Historic postcard. c. 1908?

On My Way Back from the Art Museum
 
Midnight blue, midnight blue, only it's not
midnight yet.  All the world's spread out 
on a moonlit carpet, and streetlights 
cast their light on snow, glowing
coolly in the winter dark, their stark
black iron posts reminding me of Paris streets
and sidewalks, a world to which I do and don't
belong, a world of lit windows that make 
chinks in the darkness, shining outward, 
lit rooms we anticipate and remember afterward,
rooms hung with vivid, saturated pictures.  How alluring, 
to exit into darkness with our neurons buzzing!
The mind's lit up, delighted: the eye 
loves what it loves and no one can stop it.

Kristen Staby Rembold

Kristen Staby Rembold: "My first collection of poetry, Music Lesson, was published in 2019 by Future Cycle Press.  I have also published two chapbooks of poetry, Leaf and Tendril, and Coming into This World, as well as a novel, Felicity, winner of Mid-List Press First Fiction Series Award.  My poetry has appeared in Smartish Pace, Green Mountains Review, Literary Mama, New Ohio Review, Crab Orchard Review, and Cider Press Review, among others."