On “Island Funeral”, egg tempera and oil on hardboard, by N. C. Wyeth, 1939.
They were worth a lot, the five years that the painter kept in his
memory and heart the scene of a maritime funeral procession,
that took place on September 11th 1934, in Teel’s Island.
It had been a lapse of time in which he honed and trained his brush,
until 1939, enabling the birth of this masterpiece.
In true, like some others, he had not seen, but heard about,
the transport to the island for burial of a 96 years’ lobsterman,
a remarkable event, remembered long afterward.
The man, one that his family was the name of the island,
where he was born and had lived all his entire existence.
In a bird’s eye perspective, both grave and lyric, we see the collision,
also the coexistence of two worlds, the sea the man had much loved
and the mainland with so hard a hillside to be climbed.
The sea was liquid and bright to honor him in this day,
the earth, substance and shadow, ready for his rest.
This poem and all others at this blog, authored by Edilson Afonso Ferreira ©
Published in The Ekphrastic Review, Oct 05 2022.
edilsonmeloferreira 