The Carpathians - University of British Columbia

John
Reibetanz
Wyeth
The eye trawls endless inlets,
picking a way over sheer
spurred outcrops and escarpments
that mark the coastal landscape
of a few millimetres
of a farmhouse wall, roughcast
in one of his canvases.
It is not Vermeer's seeing,
where paint baptizes objects
in light, sleeking surfaces
seamless as a newborn's cheek,
as if a Bauhaus God set
the polished ark of the world
gliding to eternity.
Here, light tracks fault lines, lays bare
pockmark, aura of spill, botched
resurfacing, defiles where
planed edges resist matching,
each timber's face an old man's
inexhaustibly distinct
logo of skews and wrinkles.
Unstable script: turn your back
and risk, on return, fresh dents
printing the untouched bucket,
the earth beneath it fresh-split
with watermarks. This baptism
scours off the world's finish
in spider-limbed crisscrossings.