Marilyn Nelson, 1946


Not vistas, but a home-sized landscape,beloved rooms storied, painted, lived.
A farm bought with a paintingand a ten dollar personal check.
And almost from the beginning,the intention to pass onwhat an artist sees, what artists make.
A parcel of land, a vast legacy.
Admire the houses, barns, outbuildings,and studios, uniformly Venetian red.Respect the visible sweat work of stoneslaid in walls and foundations, terraces and walks.
Admire the sunken garden, the wildflower meadows,the path through thick woods to the fishing pond.
Walk through the farm envisioned by artists.
Admire the home artists made.
Or you can step from a museum’s polished flooracross a carven, gilded thresholdinto the farm reimagined in brushstrokes.
From that wooden bridge over there,hear those three women’s tinkling laughter?
Over there the other way, seethe black dog panting near the youngish manlifting stones into a half-built wall?Step out of the frame again, and beenveloped in birdsong and dapple.
Feel the welcome of small particulars:the grove beside that boulder,the white horse tied in front of that barn.With eyes made tender, seethose elms, from shadows on the grassto the highest leaves’ shimmer.
With your friends, lovers, family, strideacross this chromatic broken brushwork.
Sit a minute at the granite picnic tablewith the artist’s daughters, dressed in summer white.
You can daub this earth, so lyric, so gentle,from the limited palette of your own love right now.
Any place you care for can hold an easel.Everything around you is beautiful plein aire.