New Found Land

To Arcadia, to Giverny,
Fontainebleau, or Arles;
To Brittany, or Fiji,
The Marquesas, or Morocco;
To Maine, the Hudson, or Cape Cod,
Truro or the Hamptons call . . .
Perhaps to Mexico,
Columbia, or Yosemite,
To the distant-most outlandish
Place, keep a bowl of soup,
A glass of wine, a Key West
Of the heart and mind,
Where art can grow on half
The cost, and half again,
Or less than that.
Or better still a newfound land,
A sandbar off Belize
Or Cannes, to while away, to paint,
To plan, the art utopia
No one can achieve in life,
But hanging dreams of it export
The beauty to which all resort.

John Sevcik

The Neighboring State

Today Vermont came to visit.
Sometime in the morning, when all was dark,
it took over from Maine, which was here
yesterday afternoon. Today I think
of going into the village for a cider or hot soup,
of sitting with friends in flannel coats
who know the woods and when the maple
gives, and have a friendship with the world
around a stove. I would go there today,
if only I had gone before. They do not know me
in the village; I do not know the village.
And yet it visits in the cold its warmth
of cloud, its humid gray of snow.
Tomorrow maybe Maryland will come,
with secret lore of clamming and of crabs.
I will adjust my sail to dream of that.
Wandering is what the weather maps.

John Sevcik