after Andrew Wyeth's painting "Christina's World"

The house
of many shadows
is sternly ordered now    
the barn    
a shape without splinters
against the sky

My father’s shirts on the line 
are no bigger 
than the pigeons I watch 
from my chair 
each day    flapping 
about the barn    Mother

will be distraught to find me 
gone    but a painter 
needs distance 
to tame the eye     
Yet here I lie   
the ant

climbing my shoe
each head of wheat   
its own gold light    
my crooked crutchless 
self    astounded    
bound to the earth’s body

without muscle 
to stand upright or reason 
to see 
as one who has dominion 
over beasts    birds   
ants of the infinite 
field