Читать книгу Swan Bones - Bethany Bowman - Страница 16

For Suzie

It’s a good day to paint. She has a clear view of the courthouse,

bulwark of this Midwestern town with its bell and postcard austerity.

Winter aconite, tiny yellow flowers which generally pop by Lent

have finally scaled snow. Honeybees are all over them.

Library goers, antique-shop prowlers, two police officers stop.

They are the heart of this place—heroes who care about art,

church, flowers. But they don’t comprehend her canvas.

The abandoned storefront she captures was once a five-and-dime.

Vacant for decades, the floor has caved and despite its

pressed tin ceiling, cherry wainscoting, no one’s going to save it.

Starlings flit in and out of clefts. Two lie dead in the rubble.

Birds dart into the belfry of the courthouse too, but it’s the

sunken joists of the store which seem to swell when morning

light bends, approximating waves off the coast of Kittery.

She won’t complete the work. By May, bricks and tile will fall,

town will vote and building will be condemned and razed.

The artist may or may not return to Maine, and the courthouse,

as always, will stand fettered with flags, heritage roses on the Fourth.