By Ryan Harper
For even the gentle masters of the hills
beauty is a knot of leased space and rent
canvas. In open time what are hours
in the mountains of escape?
The road up scored in good weather
for bad I take to the artist’s high estate.
Suspicious of the properties I seek
the sky bannered with great vacating
clouds, only a tempered share, the mean
gladness of a white man alone—cruising,
praying for clarity and no crowds.
To orient all the world objects, a view
shed of tenant: north river south
in repose, half-moon vague in late
morning, Catskills splittered in shadow—
Zoar, Cairo, dome of Sunset Rock—
deserted tents against the varied strokes
of day. Let in the hall untouched
I stand—a clutter of meticula, arch, pointed,
larger works drafted after purchase,
passages stenciled to the last spandrel,
relief of wall the mihrab Hudson-ward—
a masterpiece of misdirected prayers
and late names. I submit mine
to the member roll, unclear which group
tours available, this wee of hours,
fluting up and down the Taconic,
temples and tangles of a byway—
a river warp, a loom, in us
the nerves of access limited
and constant curve—
if ours now, what we will.
About the Author:
Ryan Harper is an Assistant Professor of the Practice at Fairfield University-Bellarmine in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He is the author of My Beloved Had a Vineyard, winner of the 2017 Prize Americana in poetry (Poetry Press of Press Americana, 2018). Some of his recent poems and essays have appeared in Coachella Review, Heartwood Literary Journal, Appalachian Review, Citron Review, Fourteen Hills, and elsewhere. Ryan is the creative arts editor of American Religion Journal.