Standing in Awe at the Museum of Modern Art, by Lee Stockdale

Water Lilies, by Claude Monet (France) 1914-1926

Standing in Awe at the Museum of Modern Art

It’s worth the price 
to get into the Museum 
and stand with twenty people or so 
who stand in awe
in front of Monet’s lily pads,
which get their own room
and cover the whole wall.

I understand how we’re all in awe, 
though that woman in a hat 
looks especially in awe. 
I wonder what it is she sees 
that I don’t, so I

walk over, and stand next to her,
a little behind,
to see from her vantage point,
as I don’t want to miss out 
on the slightest awe.

A couple with two children enters the room,
where only the father stands in awe,
as the mother is busy corralling the boy 
who’s chasing a frog
that hopped off a lily pad,
and his sister now wading
knee deep in the pond.

Lee Stockdale

​Lee Stockdale has won The United Kingdom National Poetry Prize and other prizes. His debut poetry collection, Gorilla, was brought out by Main Street Rag Publishing Company in 2022. He lives in the Western North Carolina Mountains.

Read other poems by Lee Stockdale:

Unaware
https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/unaware-by-lee-stockdale
​
New Stepfather (after Picasso's Geurnica):
https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/new-stepfather-by-lee-stockdale

​Elisabet Ney Visits Me at Hot Yoga Asheville:
https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/elizabet-ney-visits-me-at-hot-yoga-asheville-by-lee-stockdale