1. KNITTING LESSON
Skeins of yarn on the window ledge
Shine in a basket, spraying winter
Sunlight onto the rusty, homespun
Jacket and faded denim skirt
Of a full-breasted farm woman
Whose arms encircle a daughter’s shoulders.
Her own half-finished sweater laid
Aside on her lap, she leans to the left,
Chin resting on the smaller bonnet,
Bony hands moving small fingers
In the measured minuet of steel needles.
Scissors gleam faintly on the floor.
2. FARMYARD IN WINTER
A small sun, he glows in the gray morning.
Breast and shoulders gold as the stooks of straw
Bundled in front of his thatched-roof hutch,
Comb and wattle red as the robin perched
On the wall above him, a huddle of hens
In the shadows behind him,
Chaunticleer surveys the snowy yard.
Like oil on water, muted echoes
Of his light whisper from granite stones
And roosting hens while two
Industrious wives peck in the snow
That froths and foams across the straw-
Strewn ground, on tree and fence and wall
And distant roof: cumulous clouds
That outline his dominion.
3. POTATO PLANTERS
They bend in tandem: his hoe
Scoops the hole; her hand lets fall
The seed potatoes. Sunrise
Reddens his vest. Her muddy skirt
Is shadowy green. In the pale
Distance bleached horizon,
Mauve town and chartreuse plain
Recede. A sequence of trees is sunstruck,
Sabots and dirt-streaked pants
Share earth tones with the roughly spaded
Ground. A donkey nods by the baby
Basket-cradled under a live oak.
4. SHEPHERDESSES WATCHING A FLIGHT OF WILD GEESE
Her right arm is bent to shade her eyes
From haze-filtered autumn sunlight
That mutes the gold and coral hedge
And dusts a Biblical patina onto sheep,
Tranquil as gravestones, masticating
Olive grass into smoky wool.
Her left hand, palm down,
Signals her companion to be still and hear
The faint and fading colloquy of tourists
Winging away from winter. Her friend
Leans back on the embankment looking up,
Her child’s face soft with wonder.
Leave a Reply