my man by Jane Kennedy Stuppin  my man his belly unbuttoned hanging over his swim trunks sometimes worn when painting en plein air if the sun is out, his head hatted a flap around his neck like a french lieutenant legionnaire: a desert soldier, not a west sonoma county painter of oaks and rivers, his colors meandering wide, no streams or parallel barns, or telephone beams. my man his eyes slanted large as if some tartar horseman had abducted his ancestral grandmother waiting in fields of galica before the hapsburg empire marched its prancing horses over the plowed earth grained with wheat in summer and wild flowers every spring. my man returning after the sun goes down with oceans of brown hills rolling into the next and scrub oak in each crease as if some giant fingers had tucked them in to keep the body asleep and round and firm for feet in dreams to tip-toe across or three rotund mad-waa-zelles to slide wide down in slow motion swells that never come to the bottom where the canvas ends: a trinity of no repose. my man with thumbs for palettes yellowed and colored as if a defiant fungus had planted its spore under his nails not expecting a carpenter to flail away at lumber for a privy house or any other practical purpose enjoying his spectacle of splattered referred paint hiding its source, his eye, his eye seeing before the brush strokes. my man whose double chin flows over his neck concealing the swallow of tonight’s chocolate chip cookie washed down with a sixteen ounce glass of crystal clear mineral water from nearby calistoga, no evian from the land of swiss and jagged pyrennees. Jane Kennedy Stuppin is Jack’s wife and is an accomplished poet and musician. This poem was published in the book Saltwater, Sweetwater: Women Write from California's North Coast, Floreant Press, 1998.

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