Final Painting in the Room

“August” by Sophia Heymans; acrylic, paper mâché, prairie grass seeds, dried dill, oil on canvas. 48″ x 60″. 2014

On July 3, Sophia Heymans, her boyfriend Paul, and her sister Chloe, walked another painting over to my house. This one was “August.” I had it a shorter time, as it needed to go back to the Twin Cities this past weekend. I had it during one of the hardest stretches of treatment, and though I contemplated and enjoyed it a lot, I didn’t write any poems. I blame chemo brain.

The paintings are all set on our 80 acres. And the first two included vistas I see every day: my house and my garden, and then the prairie and wetlands. But this third painting showed a part of the farm that is important to me but I don’t usually see. West of Sophia’s parents’ house is a view of my husband Steve’s tree nursery. And along with a prairie and a sunbather and her cat, I spotted the deep pond with a dock that Steve uses to water trees. Once I realized this patch of plain ground with a few pines on it was the tree nursery, the painting began to speak to me.

I remember when Steve and I were first dating and we walked out to see the tree nursery. I had a mild anxiety attack. There were thousands of trees out there. A gigantic fenced area with seedlings, rows and rows of locusts, maples, oaks, willows, pines (white and red, and many more rows of arbor vitae. What man was this I was already in love with and tying my fate to? It was so BIG. Who would take on a project like this? And I wanted to make one thing clear: I’m not going to work in a tree nursery. As he pointed out where the deer had penetrated the fence, and as we walked the rows of crooked trees, deer-mauled trees, and rabbit-girdled trees, I was even more anxious. My perfectionist self couldn’t deal with this scale or, well, this chaos.

But this month, from my bed, looking at Sophia’s painting, wondering what those three big trees were doing in that prairie, I had to smile. They are large, and they are crooked. And they are dancing. (The willows are dancing, too.) What you can’t see is that these trees are also 3-dimensional. You have to get close to see that.

I had to get close to see that dock on the pond, one of three ponds on the property, and the deepest. It is also our “swimming hole,” and a hole it is. The dock helps you get in the water cleanly, but you still have to climb up the steep bank to get out. Only Steve and I of the people on the farm are willing to swim in that pond. Which is a shame, because it is deep and stays cool and algae-free into the heat of summer. And because from that pond you are surrounded by blue-bottles and willows and sky.

You also have to get close to see the sunbather and, what I didn’t notice until I was way up close, the black cat. That’s Sophia’s cat Ivan. Ivan the indoor cat, we called him, every time we saw him roaming around outside. Eventually he didn’t come back home, most likely a casualty of one of the large predators that have a home deep in the woods on the farm.

And the sunbather’s fingers and toes, which I didn’t notice until I was up close, are the color of the bright flowers of the prairie.

In fact, the petals are fingernails and toenails.

But back from my view from the bed, what I found myself looking at again and again was this patch, the field beyond the trees.

In all three paintings I’ve lived with during this journey, there was a view of fields beyond, and the horizon line of forest, and the sky. It’s the beauty of the perspective, looking out and over the landscape. What scope this young woman painter who grew up on the prairie has. What scale. And what detail, too.

And what about me? Eight years on this prairie and in this landscape. I have written three books: Habits, H is for Harry, and an unpublished novel set in this place, Officer Down. That doesn’t include a volume and revision of my Art of The Saint John’s Bible series.

I did my poetry study in New York and in Northern California. And when a friend visited me in California, he said: “You have to get back to the Midwest. The Midwest is your muse.” I didn’t dream even when I moved to Minnesota in 2005 that I’d live in a place as beautiful, varied, and storied as this. That I’d live in these vistas. None of us knows, really, where life will take us. May I be as big as these 80 acres. And have a vision as big as my artist husband and artist niece who have lived here longer than me.