The mute pieties enshrined in every day things

Fowl (pheasant and ptarmigan), hanging hams, plump dead-eyed fish, and outside the open door, a small lamb bent like a supplicant to the grass.

There are days when I can revel in Alex Katz and Ada, when the surface of canvas and painterly craft of wet on wet suffices.

But other days, port in the storm days, Flemish is needed. Something to anchor, to nail down, as nails pierce the tendons and either break or bypass the small bones in the wrist to grab hold of the wood beneath.

A bad theory beats no theory, the constitutional scholars say, beating their tightly tuned drum. Mute pieties amplify mute agonies, the painters show by way of ostention, which is embodied meaning made regal in its pellucid silence, this exposition of the Host.