Touring Giverny with Claude Monet

Touring Giverny with Claude Monet

For years I had longed to see Giverny.
Monet now stood before me,
his long beard greying.

His right eye hid behind a black lens.
His left eye tracked me
through thick glass.

Your bridge is beautiful, I gushed.
"It's mere wood
without a morning mist,"

he revealed. After the tour I lingered
in his studio, hoping to pocket
a departing gift.

Paintings leaned against the walls.
"They're just ruins,
the colors all wrong," he sighed.

"Come back in the spring
when I have something
to wake up to.

The air is too muddy
to work now." As my car pulled away
his Japanese bridge receded.

It ached in the cold air for an easel
to be set across from it. Would I ever
see its pond again, quivering

in the transient light,
as if touched by Monet's
delicate brush?