A STORM WINDOW MEDITATION

I Love You

I dip my brush, drip drops of white

brush back and forth, back and forth

in a steady rocking motion thinking

about the storm windows I’m painting.

Trees free their leaves. Lady bugs

tap on barn windows, patter like rain,

walk on my painted storm window frame,

fly into my hair, pin themselves to my shirt.

In the distance your chain saw chews into

standing deadwood, monuments

of the last ice storm. We carried wood.

We carried snow to warm into water.

Went to bed at seven, arose as day

appeared again through frosted panes.

I brush the same white used in our farmhouse

the white you stored on the kitchen counter

in a plastic butter container, that I opened

slopping paint over our baked potatoes.

The same white I painted the kitchen table

and brushed on matching rocking chairs.

I am lulled by the back and forth motion

the dripping drops, the mountain sounds.

Sparrow wings brush my hair, flying in one barn door

and out the other, a shortcut between bird feeders.

In the lilac bush, in apple trees, on the ground, they gather--

chickadees, purple finches, blue jays, nuthatches,

mourning doves and other passing strangers.

One yellow rosebud by two frosts forgotten holds hope

for perhaps one more sweet heirloom blossom.

Miss kitty stretches, a panther on tiptoes looking

hoping to quench her thirst in the dry birdbath.

A chipmunk sits on my rusted red wheelbarrow--

garden weeds need to be dumped. I dip my brush

drip drops, brush back and forth, back and forth

in a steady rocking motion no longer thinking

about the storm windows I’m painting.

Your chain saw has stopped. Now, I have questions.

How many more winters?

How many drops of paint in a life?

LJ Austin 2002

ART: LJ Austin "Maine Homestead Winter" 2018