Poet to Painter
Thought you’d want to know that Nehemiah’s gone—moved, I have to trust,
to another farm. The cows and other calves are pastured now across the road,
and all of them are blonde (but more the color of buttermilk than the light of
your hair). As you’ve always said, nuances disappear in monochrome, so it is
still hard for me to tell these little ones apart. All in all, this early winter has
not been as welcoming as last, until today’s blowing snow. Under its brush
even the restless bull is stroked into a muslin silence, perplexed at how
quickly the drifts cover the plain umber of the farm’s underpainting and alter
his terrain. Or so it seems. I am not sure whether I favor the familiar
landscape or this one, or in which of the two I can more easily lose myself. . .
as I came here to do. That, and write, of course—for which I am primed. But
once again I am falling behind in my promises and wondering, as always,
just what you would make of it all.
— first appeared in Diner: A Literary Journal