American Landscape Painting

Frozen trees fencing dawns’ grey.

In the foreground, the baby floats

above the black lake, spins end to end

in its white blanket, will never fall or break

the clear ice. Think of a Eucharist

held eternally in the mouth’s dark room,

whiteness undimming, flesh

never dissolving. The mother who did this

is gone from the frame, has already ceased

to matter. To say she was caught

is to dramatize the kitchen table, the mug

cold in her hands, the soft knock

as though holding her under water,

the words lost behind the window, the story

winding down to the inaudible mutterings

of a tired judge. Still, the child spins

in mid-air, held by the painter’s brush,

refusing to let go. Why do we keep him

waiting? What story does it tell? Of childhood

and the bird lost in our chimney, surrounded

in all directions by sooty night. It called and knocked

for days, and nothing we could do,

so close as it was, in our own home,

but entirely out of reach. If you go there now

there’s no record of this,

only the still lake that holds,

at its center, the white moon,

but you could ask around and hear

about the mother’s smoky breath

in the cold dawn, wild eyes

and purple shawl, although no one arrived

until later, when it started to snow.