What Wyeth Didn't Caption

They call it longing, the way she's turnedtoward the house like a woman who just needsto want something enough to make the distancecollapse. I call it math. I call it the exactcalculation of how many inches of grassa body can cross before the asking-for-helpcosts more than the crossing does. I've donethat math myself, on a good day, at the mailbox.Nobody paints you reaching for your cane.They paint you reaching for the house instead,the long gold field standing in for allthe unglamorous mechanics of a bodydoing what a body actually does:deciding, again, today, to go the distance,on its own terms, in its own particular time.