You enter through depths of ocean floor
meeting sky, bowl bottoms and moons, raindrops
becoming nature’s earrings, light transparent as heart.
You welcome ferns and eucalyptus inside, release air and breath
of courtyards and gardens.
Through floor-to-ceiling glass windows, workers and visitors integrating
vision, labor of saws and hammers, computers thrumming,
paint brushes, patina
of copper turning green through the magic of nature.
Can this wandering on stone paths lead to embrace of eyes, of trees
of winters and springs?
Can we sing or bellow against tyranny against earth, peoples
and creatures, our fish, toucans of bright beaks?
You wear your skin dappled with V’s of blue sky, contract
and expand, our breaths, this freedom we seek amid
children’s laughter, the posing of a black girl and a yellow girl dancing
in liberation’s glare, the lover, in a wheelchair, of Asawa’s sculptural art.
Circling the grounds around the Pool of Enchantment, riding the elevator
for views of a city glistening in March’s pale light, then touching your skin, golden
and dark brown, the forest of Obata’s trees, you open
your thousand eyes, obsidian, free.
Nellie Wong
March 4, 2023
© 2023 Nellie Wong
Written in response to M.H de Young Museum, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, Fong & Chan Architects, principal architect.
Oakland-born Nellie Wong traveled across the Bay to pursue studies in creative writing at San Francisco State University, while working as a secretary for the Bethlehem Steel Corporation when she began writing poetry in the early 1970’s. Today, Nellie visits the de Young in search of new art and new ideas.