Mrs. Smith

" Ed è bel modo rettorico, quando di fuori pare la cosa disabbellirsi, e dentro veramente s'abbellisce." (Dante)

________ Well, without the name how stunningly serene and sweet both Smiths can be (such as I've met them, drawn to their bells and heat) Now there's Smith I see grown to an infinitesimally cute orchard lot, hips and boots tramped into mud & her quietly retracting vines, who's dove-sweet in just that way: as I'd imagined it in one corner of eye. But lovely, too, is Smith the portrait and any of her poetical breeds, drawn from brow to her elegant chin. Again, a lumbering sort of road ahead and she were mated, to me, as the portrait of any sweetly doughty matron can certainly be-- I'd say, in fact, the Smith I see and that other's sweet doughty pic really can be the same to the runner who dreams such disparities as these, but primarily that between a Lady and some imagined mud on the road ahead _____________________ *Poem inspired by a portrait of Mrs. E.D.Smith which hangs in the Red Carriage House at the Erland Lee estate but dedicated to the elderly-elegant Mrs.Smith who still resides in her clapboard house beside an abandoned orchard.

If only she knew..