Poem for Thursday and Kelsey Creek Farm Animals

Weir Farm
By Marilyn Nelson

Not vistas, but a home-sized landscape,
beloved rooms storied, painted, lived.
A farm bought with a painting
and a ten dollar personal check.
And almost from the beginning,
the intention to pass on
what an artist sees, what artists make.
A parcel of land, a vast legacy.

Admire the houses, barns, outbuildings,
and studios, uniformly Venetian red.
Respect the visible sweat work of stones
laid in walls and foundations, terraces and walks.
Admire the sunken garden, the wildflower meadows,
the path through thick woods to the fishing pond.
Walk through the farm envisioned by artists.
Admire the home artists made.

Or you can step from a museum’s polished floor
across a carven, gilded threshold
into the farm reimagined in brushstrokes.
From that wooden bridge over there,
hear those three women’s tinkling laughter?
Over there the other way, see
the black dog panting near the youngish man
lifting stones into a half-built wall?

Step out of the frame again, and be
enveloped in birdsong and dapple.
Feel the welcome of small particulars:
the grove beside that boulder,
the white horse tied in front of that barn.
With eyes made tender, see
those elms, from shadows on the grass
to the highest leaves’ shimmer.

With your friends, lovers, family, stride
across this chromatic broken brushwork.
Sit a minute at the granite picnic table
with the artist’s daughters, dressed in summer white.
You can daub this earth, so lyric, so gentle,
from the limited palette of your own love right now.
Any place you care for can hold an easel.
Everything around you is beautiful plein air.

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My Thursday was not eventful apart from finding some very minor things I'd misplaced in the move, at the back of my desk and in boxes I didn't realize contained anything but files. It was another gorgeous day -- I even wore flip flops when we walked to the beach so I could put my feet in the water -- and we watched a blackbird in a quarrel with an eagle, who didn't seem to notice another bird was squawking and buzzing past him. 

We ate my leftover pad see ew with General Tso's tofu. Only a couple of my usual Thursday chat friends could come tonight, but I got to catch up with them for a bit before watching the end of the first season of Foundation, which I thought was better paced and more interesting than anyone had told me, and now we're watching this week's episode of Silo, also better than its press. Here are some of the animals we met at Kelsey Creek Farm: