—after Leon Wyczółkowski's painting, “Spring in Gościeradz”


i.

We speak of art, as we make our trip.
We speak against erasure.

You thumb through a tattered volume of lesser-known painters
as we pass one wide, flat field, after another.
Even when only gently, the snow blows,
wiping out the uniqueness of each farmstead,
overcoming even the bulk of hibernating machinery,
John Deere, Massey Ferguson, Kubota.

At times we have to guess where the road is.

You were born in this town and we've not been back since.
How right it feels to make this trip as a birthday gift,
after all your grief and turmoil.


ii.

History at the antique shop glows, the oil-rich wood of the egg crates,
the matrix of cardboard inserts still intact—and this holds something off, doesn't it?—
as do the red-handled rolling pins, the sturdy glass of the Fire King bowls,
the green and gold to-be-sewn-on badges with emblems of moose and beavers,
the time-softened postcards, their precise script, official stamps,
the baker's hutches, enamelware teapots, rusted cow bells heavy as human heads.
A primitive blue painted cabinet is jam-packed with rolled up carpets, four rugs
spilling out onto the floor. We stop, altered by awe, tracing their elaborate patterns.

We spend hours threading the three levels of furniture, ephemera, bric-a-brac,
the smell of homemade macaroni soup stitching us to our own narratives,
as the proprietress walks a bowl to her husband (who suffers from dementia)
waiting for her at an oval oak gateleg drop-leaf table, in a private, cordoned-off area.

I watch you thoughtfully touch things, being touched by things, being mended.

Days after I drop you off at home, the first lock-down begins.
Now, still in winter, wondering when we might be together again,
I write you, revisiting Wyczółkowski's “Spring in Gościeradz.”

That pear tree outside his window burns, a golden fire.
The flowers in the vase are doused in flame, too,
as are the curtains, the chair's upholstery, the open book resting in the window.
The tapestry burns its brightest where it's most abraded,
and gold leaf, a debris of stars, shines, shaken, an invitation, all over the wood-worn floor.

Remember upstairs in that antique shop,
those intricate old rugs we loved, that had been rolled, then lobbed,
a shelf's worth of dark spirals?

They're still there, awaiting the light.