1 poem

by Lynn kong

Cary Christian School

Corduroy jacket

ekphrastic poem on Andrew Wyeth’s Winter 1946

It was a ragged sort of day--a notched windlessness beneath the hill.
It was a womb-like sort of hill--thatched with yolk and mirk and shack.
There was a lunar vacancy in the soil--puddle after puddle clamoring for epilogue.
The air itself, stale and clattering of finitude, was of the sort that lays open the brittleness of all mortal affairs.

On that day, a corduroy jacket became the allegory of a youth's first flight.

It starts with a button, for the act of fastening, the act of clasping,
signals the advent of the notion of self.

Imperceptibly, a sparse set of leaves encrusts the lining of that pensive brown coat,
while words glaze leaf after leaf, words full of reticence and pent up eighths of a life.

The sleeves fumble in a vague sort of penitence, though no act of penance could atone
for those last few footfalls on the edge of that womb-like hill, that ragged day.

Cuffs all mangled and threads unraveled,
there's a fugitive scent on the boy's westering brow.

To the youth, the jacket is exile.
To the jacket, the youth is home.