seeing christina

seeing christina

barn
from wyeth's grave

hard to say which way she's facing

back to any gazer who invades her

world easy as walking in for tea

assuming thee's plenty of cream 

if it's taken that way or something

sweet if it's handy or even necessary

or water drawn up from the pump

and sitting still in the kettle 

on the burner plate.  Ignore her

stench. Ignore the loose floor

boards or the obvious worn to gloss 

spots she's as acquainted with as if

they were her lover, and her hip

bone and tipped lip of pelvis bone

honed as on a stone (though if 

you go to the barn you'll know

such a stone) go barefoot in the close

of the morning in the close 

of the noon hour in the close 

of the whole length of the day

and evening and caress where 

her body and the grim grip of her

fist is a heron on the thin barren birch

limbs sticking through the river

ice in winter.  how do we know

it's the old house she's seeing tell me

what do you see?  fields like wheat?

really blueberry beneath.  Wheel

tracks thick as troughs muddy pot

holes doesn't she have to slide through

on her way across the flat horizon

the painter has tracked you to?  Or

the sixteen windows facing 

the sea aren't there sixteen see

the deep receding nearly green 

matte sans sheen.  The one economy

of a frugal rag the shifting from

house to barn and the swallows 

against the lift of the different

wind in this acre of field the ascension

of her coming chignon and thin

thin aggression of the ladder 

against the rafters