Making a Living

reflection 

christina's world

cushing

Making a Living

(on Wyeth's Barn Loft)

Accommodating swallows, the barn

doors stayed 

open, the broken window

in the loft stayed

broken.  In the cold weather

when they'd flown, he'd close

the doors for a good few

months and come to some secret

agreement with the missing 

pane, the way he'd had to

hauling in his dory in for good

and forever to tend

to her.  The water would rot

the nets and the deep

driven posts in the cove would bare

all like a mouthful

of old and disobeyed

morals.  Work went

inland.  The barn,

where he and Christina used

to jump from mow to mow

and slope to slope

and feel both

weightless and suspended,

would argue if air wasn't really better

than salt

water.  They'd both take

a fall like grownups

and grin in front of widows

that would later make them

famous, or

at least his cripple sister, and who'da

thought?  And in her favorite

pink dress, still watching

the swallows, their darting

attention, flying in

their flying out

from down below that knoll, some

new birds, some returning, always

bearing home.