he always makes me think of the bones of the world
with those flat planes and cold colours
a sense of seeing the underneath of things
over our mantle hangs
a print of pennsylvania landscape
a huge sycamore in the foreground
sprawls naked across the whitened sky
dwarfing the farmhouse down the hill
in the valley below the river glints bright
against the russeting autumn leaves
and over all prevails a melancholy calm —
no one would suppose this had been a battlefield
and that the tree knew washington and lafayette
or that the stone quaker farmhouse is trimmed in red
