Folk artist

They could have been drawn by a child
but it wasn’t a child who was drawn
to those tulips on the window sill
those three black cats with eyes aglow
the bird with a worm, the dog in the snow
or the hand-drawn cart and the man behind it
who moves through his days without a shadow
who lifts his face to hers on the pillow
both of them open in shadow-proof ways
open to whatever goes and what stays
in a one-room house with two people in it,
so a child might have done it, but a child didn’t.

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This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 36 Number 9, on page 25
Copyright © 2023 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com
https://newcriterion.com/issues/2018/5/folk-artist-9761