Art

by Jack Meyers

Art
is a quality of attention,
the way color says how
light feels: yellow for the
aerosol of happiness, black
for the zero of what isn't;
the way light lined up right,
can cut through steel. Anything
is art if the mind's flawed right:
how soup feels being stirred,
how silence, broken open just so,
releases its essence and graces
the mind as a mint leaf in the air.

It's those who can't understand and
are dumbfounded by the obvious,
who thrive on on dissonance and
subverting the ordinary into the
extraordinary who end up being
artists. What good is that, you ask?
No practical use as far as I can see.
In fact, Archimedes could've been
bragging about art's uselessness when
he said "Give me a long enough lever,
a place to stand, and I will lift the earth."

Comment: Meyers is a Texas poet who was state laureate and now teaches at Southern Methodist University. I especially liked "Anything/is art if the mind's flawed right:/how soup feels being stirred/how silence, broken open just so,/releases its essence and graces
the mind as a mint leaf in the air./"

I have to admit...my grasp of classical references is very limited. I thought at first he was referring to Achilles and then realized Archimedes was someone different. In case of you are as classically challenged as me, Archimedes, who was Greek, was considered the greatest scientist/mathematician of antiquity. He also is regarded as developing the principle of the lever, as referenced in the poem.