Key

a poem by Roger B Rueda

A gallery of great paintings adorns your house,
and every year you put in
a new treasure to your collection.
You know how much they cost you,
and you keep track
of the quotations
at the auction sales,
congratulating yourself
as the price of the works
of your carefully selected artists
rises in the scale and
the value of your art treasures
is enhanced. You call them yours.
No, you are only their keeper.
You keep them well-varnished
and framed in gilt,
but have you passed
through the gilded frames
into the world of beauty
that lies behind
the painted canvas? You know
nothing of those lovely places
or images
from which the artists’ souls
and hands have drawn
their inspirations.
They are closed and barred to you.
You have bought the pictures,
but you  cannot buy the key,
an amorphous and impalpable mass of key.