Stopping by Fields on a Snowy Afternoon by Jane Rohrer

Stopping by Fields on a Snowy Afternoon

You've obviously been here
   since my last visit.
    and I like what you've done
But is it landscape
   or is it art?
It's all so confusing
   with you coming from the other side.

Calligraphy, there on the contours of the field,
   scribbling in stalks and stacks
   left from the fall,
   are visible in the distant upper levels
   of the canvas,
If it is a canvas.
But, it's the wash of thin white,
   just a sift of snow,
   (or is it white,)
   that erases the visual samsara
   and beckons to me from beyond the pale.
But I can't.
I am per pale.

We've been split like a schist.
Here I am and there you are,
   parallel.

http://tinyfarmblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/win07_snowy_field_january1.jpg

http://www.ntoddblog.org/photos/winter/shadowsonthehille.html

Sweet Talk by Billy Collins

You are not the Mona Lisa
with that relentless look.
Or Venus borne over the froth
of waves on a pink half shell.
Or an odalisque by Delacroix,
veils lapping at your nakedness.

You are more like the sunlight
of Edward Hopper,
especially when it slants
against the eastern side
of a white clapboard house
in the early hours of the morning,
with no figure standing
at a window in a violet bathrobe,
just the sunlight,
the columns of the front porch,
and the long shadows
they throw down
upon the dark green lawn, baby.

http://www.hermes-press.com/collins2.htm