It is suggested that Vermeer painted

in only five rooms, useful rooms like these:

spaces for reading paneled in juniper,

for dreams, for sex till the sheets turn to water,

another with books underlined with wood

and set about with special objects:

sea biscuit plump as a tick, corkscrew

carved from the long tooth of a walrus

scrolled in flowers, the envy of the sea,

antique glass, monkey jaws, perfumers,

the needle beak of a gar and inkwells,

something folded in paisley and a kitchen

from which trigger fish and salads sail out

on china, and on the other side of the window

like a varnish, the largest, with sky for a ceiling.

It could happen here as well. Almost never

needing to leave, small poems/paintings

of perfect interiors, life as we live it,

impasto and swash, never exhausting variety.

The contents could be endlessly rearranged,

Each room new again moving the furniture,

the carved chairs skied  room to room,

upholstered flowers fluffed up, the occupants

dressed or undressed, music applied.

I move a candelabrum to the shelf,

the two figures cast on it stand in front

of a metal tree which are its candle-holding arms,

thirty prisms shuffle their rainbows,

the tinkles ring out and reenter the glass.

The room is ready for another interpretation.

We and the light have come so far just to be here.

Winner, First Annual Dos Cosas Prize, from Words and Images 2009