This is a picture of the spring breezes we get in the flat farm lands of the mid-west. There is a freshness, and directness to the mid-west that is unique to it, a type of small town poetry. The canvas is roughly done to reflect these qualities.
The wonderful midwest with the God's country of Mercer County (and nearby environs) and all the way over to Indianapolis but with each passing year there is less wonder to the ice on steps, the heavy frost on the car windows. I can't help but dream of a White Christmas on a warm sandy beach in the Caribbean (or at least Florida) and a return to the hayfields of the midwest when the grass grows green again - well, come to think of it that means mowing grass - maybe the desert southwest would be good or the grape fields of eastern Washington State.
Ode to the Midwest By Kevin Young I want to be doused in cheese & fried. I want to wander the aisles, my heart's supermarket stocked high as cholesterol. I want to die wearing a sweatsuit— I want to live forever in a Christmas sweater, a teddy bear nursing off the front. I want to write a check in the express lane. I want to scrape my driveway clean myself, early, before anyone's awake— that'll put em to shame— I want to see what the sun sees before it tells the snow to go. I want to be the only black person I know. I want to throw out my back & not complain about it. I wanta drive two blocks. Why walk— I want love, n stuff— I want to cut my sutures myself. I want to jog down to the river & make it my bed— I want to walk its muddy banks & make me a withdrawal. I tried jumping in, found it frozen— I'll go home, I guess, to my rooms where the moon changes & shines like television.
I have a seared memory: I was at St. Charles Seminary on a late afternoon in July. My room was on the third floor facing the long front entrance driveway. To the west a developing rainstorm was approaching. The sky increasingly darkened. The birds flew east. The wafting smell of summer rain engulfed me as I watched the advance of Mother Nature's moisture. The sheets of rain steadily marched my way and the hungry farmland gulped in delight.
