IMPROVISATION  #52
WINSLOW HOMER'S TIME
(1836-1910)

Never frozen
but lost in the sunshine
by the shade of windows
upon this earth's midwinter
in your crossing lines
of finely veiled frost
in Winslow Homer's time
a landscape painter
across hidden country scenes
by this poet born in Boston
and studying at Cambridge
as we both walk
in the spirit on back streets
amid many Christmas fir trees
now talking by first light
about your drawings
in your art museum rooms
not in posturing
but by mirrors of shadows
yet chosen to be unwilling
to acquiesce
in my stubborn adolescence
to leave these resting pictures
that houses his water colors
we breeze by illustrations
on a January twentieth day
believing as we watch by
these forlorn
rain washing docks
crashing when huge waves
splash secret barges
and life catches us ice fishing
at these hinterland banks,
your pictures are actually
shaping and shouting to me
in this twice born illustration
here on this plain
with the Northeast wind gusts
covering over the harbor
of  clipper ships
with nature boasting of its
powerful whip-lashing us
and I'm alone giving thanks
for this hour in a season
as we secretly lock in
and twice connect
I'm begin to reason
as a teenage art critic
wishing to feature scenes
of your marine paintings
from the Maine Coast
at Prouts's Neck.