No Canvas

Theme: A wintery scene viewed.
Words to use: home, Christmas,
Words forbidden: tree, field, street, car, road, lights, store, people, the
Additional parameters: At least 24 lines, rhyming or not.



No Canvas

First glance - vintage photograph.
Black and white with shades of gray.
Blackened branches scrape vellum sky,
spear earthwards in darkened arrows,
dead grasses arrowhead.

Focused look reveals no mere photograph.
A pastoral painting, perhaps.
Water color pond with blurred greyed overlaps
ripples slicked with ice.
Lone Canada goose mere paint swipe overhead.

Russet oak leaves swirl against weathered
split rail fence with canted posts.
Brown on brown,
a deer raises his antlered head
scenting November wind.

Brush-strokes of frayed corn stubble,
winter-bearded meadow smeared with dustings
of snow in grooved hollows between rows.
Tattered remnants of lonely gallybagger
seeming to hold an unimpressed crow.

Closer, roughened bark of hickory;
palet knifed edges in oils. Crackeled ice
frames puddles left by hoof prints.
Air, scissor sharp, cuts through warmest coat.
Antlers high, buck bounds for forest edge.

Nostrils widen as hint of wood smoke
wafts and home beckons. Arms weary now
from heft of Frasier fir. Buffalo-plaid jacket:
scarlet a bright flash midst evergreen branches.
He brings Christmas home.