Ode to Norma Basset

I speak to myself -

Also in the same medium

Of marker paper -

The phone ringing in the background

And a blender machine (that was broken for a month)

In my comfortable

Hour-long stay in Denny’s -

An urge.

That makes me

And Norma Basset -

To capture the essence of

Workers heaving hay

Around with pitchforks -

Like it so needed to be carved -

The wind swept pine trees,

The floating the white clouds

The white-shirted men

In old, sturdy blue pants

Ignore each other except

The cow over the depressed,

Brown house and chimneyed-barn

Did she stay there – to sketch?

Beaten under the sun with her crayons and paper -

Or in delicious memory heralded up the holy figures

Of country life with wood and a tool handled

With the same – smiling in glee with the colors

Rolled on the act and the crisp paper squeeze

In between

Wrenching it out with

One trained motion -

The final draft of a,

‘Haying in Vermont.’