After Marsh Hawk (1971) by Andrew Wyeth
Leave it to a beautiful morning to reveal all
my hidden disappointments. The frayed black oak,
its tangled boughs, peeks from behind
the white selvage of the mill’s curling clapboards
like a lost and irretrievable person
who departed before I said anything meaningful
or final. I am often haunted
by the most ridiculous things—the blue hay wagons
and buckboards, their splintered wood and empty beds.
The smell of slag dust and dead leaves
in the burn barrel. I had a good life,
but it was so much work to get that prayer answered.
Late Autumn and the young cold lurks across the field,
its short breath desiccating the acres of bluegrass,
turning them the color of a laceration.
All my kinkeepers are gone, and I did not intend to be
the only one left. I did not want to watch
all of our history and labor lose its utility. Distracted
by the moss and mold drying out
on the stable’s pitched roof, I almost miss the bird
perched far off in the flood plain, isolated
atop a stump, waiting for winter,
holding the whole valley in its grain-sized eye.