Dinner at the Museum of Fine Arts

                …the object is not to make art,
                but to be in the wonderful state which makes art inevitable.

                                                —Robert Henri: The Art Spirit
 

For an appetizer, try olives à la Picasso,
            one-eyed, two-dimensional, tart yet satisfying, 

while a salad Gauguin offers a lush green display,
            accented in deep reds, fleshy oranges, 

sound of birdsong, the dressing citron-scented.
            Select a wine as velvety and complex as an O’Keeffe 

poppy, with the bouquet of a Santa Fe sunset.
            Soup of choice might be the Paul Klee mixed-media 

delight, polychromatic and hieroglyph-noodled.
            For the pasta of the day, try Miro’s dream-like swirls 

smothered in a surrealist sauce, the plate edged
            with feathered parsley, followed by entrée Edward Hopper, 

two lamb chops in rectangles of light, lying separately
            on a bed of lettuce, their eyes averted, the room silent. 

For an extravagant finish, order a Dada dessert:
            Hans Arp’s biometric baked Alaska, chilled to decadency, 

and coffee then, of course, poured from a rococo-etched
            silver pot to accompany your sigh as a waitress 

in a Degas gauze and satin skirt floats a bill to your table.
            It’s not for a song, this lyrical melding of food and art.