Hello All. Today’s prompt was to write about a bedroom from our past. So here it is:
Far from Needham
Far from Needham
A painting by Andrew Wyeth
The print hung in my room
A print I chose, at the museum.
A large rock in the foreground
A towering pine tree behind it
Wyeth painted it in Pennsylvania.
It was not of Needham.
His father grew up in Needham.
I grew up in Needham.
My print hung on the wall
In the room of my teen years.
An architectural oddity, once an attic
It suited me just fine in its quirkiness.
A spiral staircase to climb
And a long balcony to cross.
Like a bridge to a castle
(A castle with a huge abstract painting).
Sliding glass doors to enter
Light filled the room at all times.
A beaded curtain because it was cool.
Sloped ceiling with dark beams
Mobiles spinning shadows on the walls.
Electric green shag carpet underfoot,
An attempt to bring the outdoors in.
This was Needham, my Needham.
And yet, the towering pine,
Wyeth’s pine, was outside my window.
And the rock, Wyeth’s rock
Existed in my back yard.
Was the painting my world, and
Wyeth, far from it, could see it?
Or were there other Needhams,
Far from this one, that I should find?
Every night in that room,
I watched my pine against the night sky,
Next to his pine against the white wall.
And I thought about the other worlds
Waiting for me to discover them,
Far from Needham.
