The Tuscarora Painter Makes a Request

Will you fix the distance for me?

Hold it with a horse and rider.

They seem to know where they’re going.

Hold it with the dust plume of a pickup,

or a fenced graveyard, the gate unhinged.

And I desperately need a foreground.

You may turn toward me or turn away.

It doesn’t matter.  I know affection 

from proximity.  Please stay!  Otherwise,

I spend days staring at the haze of the

Independence Range.  The vague light

keeps me from my work.