There’s this paint-by-number,
large and imposing, that my husband
bought from an antique dealer
because he collects such things
that are pastoral.

It has hung on the wall of
our bedroom for years—
a petrified portrayal of a stream and barn
among the trees, my riparian window—
so I see it every morning and every night,
a first and last aperture.

Sometimes I am sure it is of a farm
in autumn, the leaves turning and falling
into a brook that winds past
a barn

and other times I think it is spring,
when the brook babbles with the
runoff of a long winter cooped up
in rigor below marcescent trees.

The canvas is sagging at the top,
pulling from the frame, so that
the image seems swept up
in cataclysmic waves, roiling
as I pull myself up each morning
and lay myself down at the end.

Andrew Jeter teaches writing, research, and film. He holds a PhD in English Composition & Applied Linguistics. His poems have been published by Silver Birch Press, Panoplyzine, and Peninsula Poets, and his first collection, Ancient Memories, is available at Blurb. You can read more at andrewjeter.org.