from February 07

And rubbed the surface of the bookshelf with the unguent of linseed oil,
and since the weather was sunny, the polyurethane dried like a web of egg-white
or hot metallic surface. The wood soaked the oil inside so the surface
didn’t gum up, the maple by nature so knurled that when oiled, it glows
wavy as holograms, as if the wood grew in irregular waves or turbulence.
The knot creates turbulence, the grain of wood, glowing now from being polished,
ripples around ovals. But the pine has more knots, yet the grain
doesn’t ripple like maple, turbulence brought to light by oils rubbed in.
Maples block my view of the house and stable; the woman rode the white horse
who lives in the stable this morning; the horse with large mane and long tail
and musculature of the horse of Caesar Augustus or Hadrian; an old horse, it didn’t show its age;
her daughter wears white cotton skirts cut at modest length, but when she runs,
her shorts reveal a tan, the legs not plump but vigorous. You can tell the
effects of weather on the hill
by the cutting of the stream through a bank of slate at the edge of the forest;
when there’s lots of rain a torrent of foamy water runs into the culvert beneath
the road to flood the water-meadows, blooming with ferns, then bushes,
before which a doe or two will stand, frozen at any human presence
as if they could blend into background, a reaction that might work
in the dusk, but not in day, as if they could see without being seen,
until man gets too close, after which they are in flight,
their white tails betraying them. The deer would be dressed
on the sides of barns as horse-flies buzzed. The horse fly lives
on blood of horse or other host. A bumble-bee bumps into the window pane,
wilfuly it seems, at least once this late morning or already afternoon.