Investigation in Gray and Gaudy

“What can or ought

the public care

about

the identity

of the portrait?”

said James McNeill.

Did he look down

from neutral heaven

on the dealer wearing

flannel plaid, adjusting

to my denim chair,

to make the arrangement,

pocket my check

in black and smudge and white?

The agents said

they could easily find it

if I had no carbon.

FBI with their silk knots

and sober suiting

just like the famous oil

though on different

body parts.

I could be

Mrs. Whistler,

but I was

the dupe,

eyes lowered,

the menswear pair

noble shadows,

tracking down

the evil and clever

eBay forger (not

the original cormorant-tousled Martinez

I thought I was purchasing

with his true (M) mark

from his 19th-century hand).

Inspectors with their pointed

interrogations — they were way

beyond clues — 

who when they left

would form, and be,

long shadows

at each end of day.

Make shapes you might assume

would fall

from mountain goats

in frightening terrain.

They reported answers

they knew all along.

Thigh-high in paintings,

I thought to wade out

with my honest eyes

so little notorious,

from mistaken

tonalists, expressionists,

Society of Six ...    

The crook posed in tartan,

I fine-tuned

to the agents;

he talked ordinary — that was my best judgment.

So what? He warmed, and got richer in,

my denim wingback.

I thought of Anna’s

stern profile; and were they

profilers?

And as they shook

my hand good-bye, I said,

Do your wives collect anything?

What do you think?

they implied.