Last week I walked into City Hall and stumbled onto breathtaking beauty, as surprising as finding a bright yellow tulip pushing its way up through a crack in a sidewalk.

Angele Wright stood at the foot of a marble staircase and sang a haunting Irish love ballad from the 1800s. The old stone walls echoed with the holy solitude of a cathedral.

Who would've guessed that city workers have Prufrock poetry in their souls? Who would've guessed that an unflappable dispatcher's voice of police codes and 911 calls could soar like an angel's prayer?

Transportation Director Eileen Enabnit guessed it. As city Fine Arts Fund co-chair, she invited city employees to show their artworks. About 45 set up displays, while eight unsung musicians performed.

NOT JUST ANY CITY WORKERS

Outside City Hall, Melvenia Brown of the Law Department is a gifted photographer. Christian Segman, who works in budget and evaluation, created an old TV showing a painting of a snowy forest. Debra Vitt of Public Works makes mosaics as colorful as spring wildflowers. Mike Foster showed precision line drawings of city streetscapes. Two co-workers in the Department of Transportation and Engineering, Laura Martin and Joell Angel-Chumbley,showed off talent that reaches beyond the city limits of road signs they design.

Martin's vivid waterfall and paintings framed in rusted steel were scraps of dream scenery, while Angel-Chumbley's art made from twigs, fabric and thread had the texture of tangled thoughts and whirling emotions.

"Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows," said Edmund Burke, speaking from the "Word Up! Chair" by Tom Reece of the Recreation Department. The ordinary kitchen chair was transposed into a thing of beauty by laminated lines of poetry, scattered like wind-blown leaves.

"Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes," said Carl Sandburg on the chair leg. "To be a poet is a condition, not a profession," Robert Frost agreed on the side. "God is the perfect poet," added Robert Browning on the back, while Oscar Wilde sniped, "A poet can survive anything but a misprint."

"Poetry is life distilled," said Gwendolyn Brooks.

That could apply to all the art. Lives distilled. Photos, mosaics, paintings, sculptures, pottery, drawings, handmade quilts and furniture that proclaimed: "I am more than my job."

"The poetry of the earth is never dead," said Keats from the chair, nodding, as Angele Wright sang ancient songs that took wing and soared in the cavernous stone stairwell like Keats' nightingale.

HOW ART MAKES ONE THINK

The other night I went to a play, "The Clean House." At first it was more tedious and annoying than a Tupperware party with Oprah, Barbara Walters and Rosie O'Donnell. Three women, talking, talking, talking, then talking some more. About cleaning. Then finally, in the second half, a dramatic change - a man acting like a doofus (surprise) and another woman to talk, talk, talk some more, then die talking.

But later, after the play, I started thinking about it. The metaphors began to unfold and fall away like petals from a wilting rose. There was a message - something about how we work so hard to live an orderly "clean" life until it is just an imitation, life-flavored substitute. I'm not sure I agree that the "clean" life is not worth living, but it made me think - which is what art should do.

Some art makes me think Big Thoughts. Some makes me think I don't like art. Some makes me think: The artist who made this is more than a city worker. It's a person with a soul who can "substantiate shadows."

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