Classic Poem

The scene is of a deep rural setting done by one unhurried
Impressionist, say, pre-World War 1, c.1907. Everything
luxuriant, soft and round, the paint is combed out by cordial
summer breezes. Countryside: Poland, a rained-on morning,
the distant plash of milk into wooden pails sounds thinner
than its clotted creaminess. The cobbled yard is blue and wet
after the mornings sluicing; alder, elm or poplar windbreaks,
but what shows through is the church spire you would observe
if you lifted your gaze up from the unhitched wagon, its spars
tilted off skyward from the fields, past chimney, gable, and
farmstead. The stork is here on its top (though) bottom heavy
nest of thickly woven twigs which throws the scene into surreal
proportion, suggesting a still hour of witches and moonlight
moving stealthily through the forests black patches. Stork,
calm as a weathervane (a model) presides over maize and barley
crops, that brighten through weeks of high summer, stretch tight
as a canvas to the nearby farms, and further still, to centuries
old, grassy marshlands from which the stork feeds its nestlings.