Andy's Eyes

by Zinta Aistars


-for Andrew Wyeth, American painter. Painting above, "Wind From the Sea," 1947

With your eyes I see:
chiaroscuro, shadowdance on the floor,
cat paws of patterned light flickering
across planks, rough hewn and scraped
by a hundred years of faltering steps,
footfalls of an uncomplaining life
worked hard into the wizened lines
of a proud farmer’s face – broad-cheeked
countenance with lips repeatedly kissed
by dusty wind and salt rain.
Curve inside a bowl where a drop
of daylight spills with a splash of unbridled
color, muted rainbow, burnished gold,
a galaxy of hues – umber, burnt sienna,
sand, earth red like old blood,
mud brown - and a speckled hen,
mottled sow with velvety snout,
the hooded eye of a prize bull
contemplating the forbidden taste
of sweet ruffled grass sprouting
against the hard lean of a gatepost.
Where the Brandywine flows
you dip your brush, dreaming worlds
onto canvas, painting breezes of consequence
to the tatter of curtains lacy as spiderwebs.
With your eyes I see
the variegated light of silence
caught in divine perpetuity,
complicity of gods
we dare not question.