With unselfconscious artistry the day begins,
as out in the fields the lifting sun
pulls back the hovering mist,
revealing the droplets of light
on the webs
as settings for uncut stones,
then gently suffuses the air by the pond
in a way that one sees in Corot.
In late fall, until winter sets in
with a foreground of cross-hatched stubble,
the landscape’s far-off trees
show traces of various colors
like those in a painter’s old brush;
only now, as always in spring,
they are scattered like shrubs in the distance,
where the delicate poles and wires
are aligned as if they were staves.
And those bursts, those unwritten strains,
are the sounds of the birds warming up.
Copyright © 2007 Richard Johns. All rights reserved.