My Front Yard, Summer (1941)
i wish you could see what i see out the window¹—rhododendron bush dropping blooms across the driveway & the bees drunk on fuchsia—stand of douglas firs thin as moon or fingernail or fingernail of moon, red cedars chartreuse-tipped behind them—& in the branches a goldfinch glittering, a squirrel sleeping rounded as the spots on the northern flicker’s breast—roof of the mailboxes felted with moss—purpleblue mountains against the grey eyelid of sky and no sun for miles, only the light filtered through the stratus—hill of ivy emerald and bright & in it the bugs and the dark dirt & the slug ripe and yellow— humming bush of salvia budding dusk-blue—& the earth a brittle throat of grass or a green tongue of huckleberry—the feeling of enormity in each thing—it is a very beautiful world. ²
by Clair Dunlap
from The Ecotheo Review
¹ Georgia O’Keeffe to Arthur Dove, 1942
² Ibid