“New England Saltbox” by Alexander Landfair

In a photograph of my father’s Rhode Island,
His home describes itself in tactile, sculptural terms.

A well looms. Once, I stared the photo down
Till I could picture it—till the clapboard

And shingles lay like any focused thought
Against a pure white backdrop. Now

It was an idealized beauty treated as a vision,
But an abstraction unquiet in its given body—

Insistant, puritanical & aware of its materials
And heft—stolid and wooden. The roof joists

Turn up, but return earthward decisively
Like a check-mark upside-down.

We staked it out when I first saw New England.
My father pointed, Look at the well, it’s gone.

Alexander Landfair lives on Manhattan, where he is the associate poetry editor of Narrative Magazine. He was recently a Finalist for Poetry’s Ruth Lilly Fellowship.