Blue Farm House, ca. 1846

Ann Townsend

The glass-blue days are those
           when every color glows,
           each shape and shadow shows.
                  G. M. Hopkins

At least six cats called; dogs barked by every tree;
   iguanas, goats, lizards in a cage,
       spavined horse, then the pot-bellied pig

sniffed our shoes as we hung
   from the pasture fence,
       and the parakeet flew

room to room, our accompaniment
   in the blue house. The smell rose
        from plaster walls, from the dirt basement

where bees simmered in a nest, from the dark hole
   of the kitchen sink, from the mudroom.
        It's that pee smell, the realtor said,

but she was wrong. The rich manure tea
   the farmer spread across the garden
        each spring wormed its way

beneath the fence, across the gravel yard,
    cataloguing, as it went,
        the molecules of age, decay,

the care and relief of the farmer who sat
    twenty feet away from that creeping
        spore-casting cloud beneath ground.

He carried a pole chair to the porch
    and rocked on those four legs.
        It's a still-life from above, or from

the receding point as we drive away.
tomatoes writhe in their bath of steam,
   on multifoliate vines,
       and blossom.

Now the pig roots among them,
   his hocks sinking into earth;
       now he smells his own rude smell.