Gather your brushes,
the good ones, and the good paper.
Paint the slopes of the Casselman Valley,
paint the oaks holding their leaves,
exalted among maples, their burnished crowns.
Paint too the aspens of the northern moraine,
gold and quaking by the swamps,
paint a boy where the glacier stopped,
risking his fingers under duckweed for tadpoles.
Paint also the ravens, oily with light,
claiming the sky for themselves,
celebrating wind,
paint the ghosts of plants,
hoary with seeds taking flight.
Paint the farmers on tractors,
small in long fields,
haying once more
before snow highlights the contours.
Paint my face,
erased by low sun,
paint it smooth, as a boy,
jumping stone to stone in the river,
hands in cold current,
Not wanting to go home,
testing shadowed depths
where the stones were slippery with life.
Paint the dark places.
Paint what never was found.
—after Martin Espada's "The Caves of Camuy"
