Christina's World

After Andrew Wyeth

On a hill on the horizon
the large clapboard house—
pale mustard-colored, muted, ghostly.

The prairie grass
leans wave-like to the right,
bleached no doubt by an Indian sun.

Panning to the left
her august figure rules the landscape.
Mysteriously in repose,

she dreams, but of what:
the ecstasy of walking,
the gift of her two useless legs?

Sequence

Lovers
sitting on a park bench
pigeons at their feet

Where lovers meet
kernels of corn for sale
at the pigeon park

Lovers embrace:
the pigeons overhead
take no notice

Fall in the park
leaves settle on empty benches
and two lovers

December chill
only one occupied bench
even as it snows

Cold in the park
the pigeons have all gone
so too the lovers

To Inspiration

To Inspiration (for you, my Muse) There is no poetry without pain. For you are with me always, here in candlelight or by the glow of dawn, and yes even in shadows, casting out moonbeams on silver rippled waters as I write this song through these vacant eyes and with this burdened heart. I contemplate this as a child, without boundaries yet not spoiled, in the hour of my dormant pity, encased in its own formlessness, dreaming with eyes shut, my heart fluttering like the labored wings of dragons. Ample and intimate your voice, shiny and smooth as fragile stones beneath a stream of rushing currents, uplifting even when stirred. I wait and listen for the lexicon of your smile; your words provoke in me a frisson of inspiration. You vanish the crepuscular night. I wake to the sweet smell of your breath, swallowed by some haunting dream you painted on the inside of my eyelids, barely leaving an imprint. My tears now sleep, emotion waits. I need to wake again to this vacant soul drowning when you're absent that I may always have you here with me, to hold you up to a world who may not otherwise ever know you.