"When You Come To Visit" poem by Kansas poet and artist Ann L. Carter

 

           -- encaustic by Ann L. Carter

            When You Come to Visit

 

            If you’re coming in winter

            it could be a little slick on the hill

            (only half a mile on gravel

            once you turn off the Keats Road).

            It’s the hill I thought would be steep

            enough for sledding, but wasn’t,

            just so cold that Rose (only four back then)

            was crying before we made it home.

            

            If it’s spring when you arrive

            you’ll see tulips

            as you pull in the driveway,

            growing around rocks

            placed in circles.

            Animals are buried there,

            old age, cancer, cars going too fast.

 

            In summer it will be hot

            but in the evening

            we can sit with a drink under the large oak

            in the now unused horse pasture

            (I keep two chairs there).

            I like to watch the haybales

            casting long shadows

            in the neighbor’s fields.

 

           And if you should come in fall

            and I have found my energy drained

            (for too many years, it seems),

            then near the door, still uncut,

            there will be dried stalks of sunflowers

            rising up through tangles of morning glory vines,

            the seeds replenishing the ground with hope.

 

                                        ---Ann L. Carter

 

For more of Ann’s writing, visit annlcarter.net

For information on her book “Spiders From Heaven” visit

https://rowepub.com/product/spiders-from-heaven/

 

Link for art:

https://snwgallery.com/artist-works.php?artistId=260192&artist=Ann%20L.%20Carter

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