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Passage
(Oil on canvas, 16" x 20")

Passage

A winter afternoon, or so late in fall
the brush is bare. It’s a Sunday feel,
of unusable leisure on a day that
should be full. There’s no escaping
human limitation here; no amount of
brightness hides the lack of purpose.
Where the old snow fence has been
trampled – by dogs, by deer, by boys
at play – we could step through onto
the path that seems to lead to an
apparent goal, past the lazy dunes.
But there’s only an Arctic sky that
smiles a barren smile, and a wind
blowing from nowhere to nowhere.

Still, it’s a shame, the extravagance
of light a kind of rebuke, as if just
below the surface lies a meaning not
within our stunted reach, more than
the sum of the scene’s variegated parts,
receding even as the shadows lengthen
– a secret that to grasp would be to
change our sight, quicken our hearts
and footsteps. And were we to venture
up the path, we’d be wrapped in beauty
so profound we’d never again turn back,
and all our ways would be henceforth
forward, our answers always yes, and yes,
never again the banal, the empty Sabbath.

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