The first poem I want to read is called
Ukrainian pastoral of my grandfather, who
had come from Russia was a small town photographer.
And back in those days, this was I guess in the 1920s.
He would compose very romantic photographs and paint backdrops
and you'd get a sense that you were out in the country.
And the very beautiful things were happening
when it was really in a studio.
And this was one photograph that I had seen of my grandfather
and grandmother.
Ukrainian pastoral from a photo of my grandparents.
On a wooded hillside by a river, a woman
pauses to catch her breath, leans against a silver birch.
What she sees we can't know for her eyes are shut.
She is stocky, young, her calves glisten in sunlight.
When she opens her eyes to admit us,
the Earth is a maypole around, which she sweeps a clearing.
Upon the water, a small boat is making its way toward shore.
A man rowing.
His muscular shoulders propelling him through mist.
Perhaps, he imagines the shape on the hillside,
who might be a wife or a sweetheart waiting.
But his back is to us.
Perhaps he shuts his eyes to hear the river's pulse.
When I enter the parlor, I think you've been
reading the book on your lap.
But your eyes are shut.
I remove my old coat.
I see a parakeet preening in its cage,
and a salad of onion and cucumber set on a table
by a base of yellow iris.
Was it something you heard?
My foot on the walk that woke you?
Or does light convert us into people, husband and wife
the one reading the other entering an arch as he
does each day of his life.
On the wall, a woman partially hidden by trees,
and a man gliding over water.
About whom we can invent a story or better say nothing and wait.