Fairfield Porter: Potato Farms And Hayfields Poem by Matthew Thorburn

and the green and yellow spill
of trees were what I found here.
The island was very, very
dry that summer and the grass
turned the color of the rock.
This is how light works: Elaine

de Kooning in orange and a muddy
brown jackety thing on
the floral-print couch, a smattering
of flowers, just smudges, really—
blips of white, yellow, pink
against the shore, then the lighter patch

of light on my hair, the twin pin-points
of white in Katherine's eyes, and here—
the clean gleam of our
Adirondack chairs: white on white,
sitting over their shadows
on the lawn, and on the table an open bottle,

a glass. I placed a half-filled glass
in Southampton and the island rose
around that glass: the studio, Anne
in the doorway come to see
me, and out the window the pink
and purple Canterbury bells and foxglove.

Jimmy planted those. Do you recognize
the morning harbor's pink, cerulean,
pale orange? It was always clear to me
this tree outside my studio was only
eight strokes of white touched with gray,
so I painted it that way.