Saturday, May 30, 2009

The Red Wheelbarrow--
William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow


glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens








Gone










nothing much depends
on a red wheelbarrow
fallen to rust in
the dust blown field

one thousand acres
of unsown wheat

abandoned barn
home to none but
the dry rattle of barn swallows
and the ghosts of American Gothic.


(Image: Steve Fitch, Gone: Photographs of Abandonment on the High Plains, University of New Mexico Press, 2003)