Surfaces

about seeing a Rothko painting at the MOMA

Your windows are opaque
at first glance.
Blocks of color
stacked upon a canvas.
Then as I stare
they start to shimmer.
The squares
aren't really square.
They float like torn pages
upon a pane
of murky purple water
which extends before my eyes
to new depths,
a pond in a ruined garden.
Who can fathom
where it ends?
Upon its surface
the pages transform,
the water stains them.
Brown streaked with shades of green,
beyond a veil of red,
a violet sheen glitters,
beckoning.