The Girl at the Cafe' Rendezvous

The girl at the outdoor table
is still sitting there reading
in the mural on the wall
at my dentist’s office

as I wait for the night-guard
I had fitted two weeks ago.
The painting is a good figure for an analogy:  
that although the world itself is but
but an  artifice made by a Creator,

a certain spell arises from the painting—
the same spell
as from an actual landscape
with girl, houses, fields and water.

It comes from the harmony of objects—
an echo of their underlying Oneness
even in the world of manyness.

Just as with an actual landscape,
the  spell of harmony
points to something absolutely inclusive
beyond or within
what we see.

(m.r. 2/2021)