How many people pass this place … every
day and never see it! Once it is seen,
painted, and put into a frame everyone will
come to look at it.
—Hawthorne on Painting
Wind spun pine candles and cranberry
around in a flurry
unknown in these movable dunes
stacked over a harbor view.
Today, they were still
nailing up the horizon
and painting in the wide blue lozenge
of outdoors with its props,
the small boats and houses.
Then hauled in by chain, an arc
of coastline was unwound
and pressed back against the bay.
But these mock shapes,
only folded pastel cottages
and simple surroundings close to the street,
are too beautiful for use
where later a sky and big paper clouds
are lowered on ropes
over the planetary shiftings of the cape.
Hugo Rizzoli lives in Barnstable. “Cape Strata” originally appeared in slightly different form in Cape Strata, published by Sedwick House Handmade Books, 1989.
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