Windham Chill
By R. Dennis Hayes
Response to
Spring (1868-1873)
J.-F. Millet
A grassy track recedes between small plots with apple trees
tipping their blossom over rows of cabbages or fallow turf:
perspective of dream toward a far fence where a man leans
lost in thought that surrounds him like the low-angled light
and the shade and wet scent of the enormous oak he’s under
His reverie’s horizon is a doubled prismatic phantom arch
framing a birch-tree palace on the high green ridge beyond
to one side the thatch and whitewashed walls of childhood
to the other a few cloud shreds hurried across evening blue
Adam Cornford