Sunday, January 23, 2011

Pennsylvania Field in Winter

On MLK Day, the temperature never rose above 28 degrees and the sky was mostly gray. I shivered just thinking about going outside, but it was exactly the kind of colorless winter day where I might capture the stark, rural Pennsylvania landscape that Andrew Wyeth evokes so beautifully in his paintings. So I layered up drove just outside the city and I felt like a hearty soul for getting out there.

Not far from the gritty, northwestern part of Philadelphia,
Henry Avenue winds west and suddenly there's this farm.
My field boots didn't keep my feet warm, ankle
deep in snow, but I traipsed field-side for a few
hundred feet, then ran back to the warm car.

Dried thistles on spindly branches poked out of the snow,

tiny ornaments in a stark landscape.

A cow lowed in the distance, a melancholy sound and I felt sorry
for the farm animals on that frigid winter day.

There was so little color in the winter landscape
that I noticed the muted gold of the afternoon sky.

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