In the mouse-creak hours
of a country inn night
the harvest moon
lit up a painting
on the flaky wall –
a cottage, a river,
two horses hauling a cart.
I stepped through gilt
into the pastoral scene.
The framed day was bright
as a nave of wedding smiles
and I moved naked
down yellow cornfields
to the platinum water.
Slipping away with the current
below broken-boughed willows
and black-budded ash,
I passed two patient fishermen
and a grace of courting grebes.
River weed brushed my back,
soft as the curled fingers
of Millais’s jilted lover.
I thought of the new couple,
of the suddenness and fragility of love,
and how, if I could paint new love,
I would paint myself always
into such a landscape.
Selected by Raymond Huffman
