Margaret Mackinnon 

The Artist Paints his Wife

We have to travel with it
— Anne Porter

 based on July Interior, a painting by Fairfield Porter in the collection of the Hirschhorn Museum, Washington, DC

When Fairfield Porter painted Anne,
it was July, their small bedroom upstairs
awash in the rare sea of summer—
At the windows, pink-checked curtains bloom,
the ocean air broadening a space, worn,
in other seasons, by its own familiarity.
Outside, a narrow glimpse of landscape,
unarranged. A garden planted too late.
Lost, iridescent lawn. The heavy evergreens.

And how, inside, it all comes to life
when Porter decides how the shadows go,
light entering with its own precision.
His wife on the bed, her heavy reading glasses
just removed. On the dresser, a framed letter
from a poet she loves. A sewing box.
A photograph. The white plastic phone.
These objects interest him as emblems
of themselves. His, a beautiful indifference.

But Anne will write, My own house was filled
with anger and confusion.
And on another day, This is a house
that smells of melons and roses.
In the painting, her eyes are wide, her face
a mystery we can’t help looking at—
even in the soft lavender light
of her husband’s recollection—
A little mirror on the wall behind her

offers a shine she recognizes from another time:
One autumn afternoon. A long walk through woods.
The maple leaves scattered before them
on the trail, their undersides made new and silvery
in last light, as if any marriage
were a mirror of itself. The ordinary and its opposite.
The old stories that still feel like secrets.
The fading shades of late November.
And this summer afternoon, now hushed with waiting.

___

Originally published in Southern Poetry Review

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