Wishing For the Farm

Ian Maxton

When we have the farm it will look, from above, like no other country; there will be holes blown in the hills around

Us, or bored by some enormous worm—impossible to tell how deep the tunnels go; bottomless fissures will cross

The land where tectonic movement will at last have been arrested— we will build bridges over the depths; at Three

Corners, red ochre flats and our haygrass fields will meet verdant hill country fed by the dark Mistwater—undulating

In valleys where globules like spilled oil mark the worm’s ancient path, tracing from the river to its burrows—the glow fence kept

Up to light the way; the washed-out road in the hollow near Yellow Hill will mark a boundary around where the old world was:

The interior where no road now cuts through, only runs around the perimeter of the island, until it winds in on itself

At the farm, where we will both have come in to wash up from the day’s work, leaning over the sink—together—to scrub our hands

Before dinner—in the halflight before the children get home, when the house is still—like we used to do before we had the farm.

George Inness

Newburgh, NY 1825–Bridge of Allan, Scotland 1894

The Farmhouse

Oil on canvas, circa 1894

Sheldon Museum of Art

Nebraska Art Association

Given in loving memory of Lorraine LeMar Rohman by Melanie R. Waites, Carl P. Rohman II, Stephen L. Rohman and G. Peter D. Rohman N-674.1985

The farmhouse

Kimberly Reyes

It all blurs together, doesn’t it? There was that stillborn puppy who left the world wide-eyed, her body warm & open.

That last winter of frostbitten crops we marked with a silence as dense as the graying weeds of the neighboring, abandoned farms.

Summers are dust cloud after dust cloud, & you always wait until I’m asleep to shower off the plains.

I think of the puppy often in the spring & how one turn of wind changes the crop formation & all of our animals’ dispositions.

Or maybe the baby just knew better.

She knew, like the white winter wheat, to wait until the world is more hospitable to begin because although patience hangs in the air like death, the sound of solitude is less forgiving.

Laura Knight

Long Eaton, England 1877–London, England 1970

Dressing Room No. 1

Aquatint, 1923

Sheldon Museum of Art University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Anna R. and Frank M. Hall Charitable Trust

H-1391.1970

Work Worth Watching

Caroliena Cabada

The mistress insists on watching the seamstress pin and sew this underskirt.

It isn’t that thrilling. The seamstress is not the type to hold pins in her lips, draw attention to imagined kisses. She holds her needle so its delicate weave isn’t visible. Her mistress will see the final drape of the underskirt when it falls from her hips— secure at the waist— and before she’s layered the more embellished cover.

Is this work worth watching?

Sharp and close and hidden.

Perhaps, for the mistress, it doesn’t matter the shape of the dress covering her curved lines.

Good tailoring makes fabric seem of a piece.

For the mistress, it is the making.

Aaron Douglas

Topeka, KS 1899–Nashville, TN 1979

Window Cleaning

Oil on canvas, 1935

Sheldon Museum of Art

Nebraska Art Association Collection

N-40.1936