New Mexico Landscape: A Miraculous Catch of Fish

As a boy, when I first saw Lake Huron,
I was shocked to see that the water proceeded
like space itself, as unheeded, 
to a shore that I could not be certain
existed.  I had nothing I could compare
but wheat fields, and those I saw planted.

In this painting, the land has that magic,
the simplistic, unribbed elevations
that water has and the patient
prolongation of movement.  Some tragic,
compelling force wells up in its nether self
unknown and unknowing as ground swell.

A significant landscape!  The ranch house
like a ship keeps a tenuous grip on
slow, heaving waves, accidental
as the hand that convinced it to stand out
of fear, frustration, or possibly out of hope.
Obedience followed detachment.

And the hand that sent fences like drift nets
out across these slow tides reached as far as
barbed wire, reached and persisted.
Is it not a miraculous harvest
that nothing takes when so stitched together,  
almost at point of breaking... ship sinking?