A POSTCARD IN MEMORY OF DONALD EVANS
By Robert Farnsworth
 
 

Walking past a boatyard full of cradled sloops 
                    last night, I thought of you. Yellow portholes 
                    yielded the shoulders of somebody doing delicate 
                    work, floating perhaps, above a coast he hopes 
                    he will explore, or stilting his compass across 
                    the pale deeps. Three just-varnished blocks 
                    beaded a rope across the cockpit. In the flat 
                    surrounding fields, luminous local vegetables 
                    hide beneath dark leaves, and on the pier at 
                    evening, thousands of red-needled sea urchins, 
                    swung from a trawler's hold, pour loudly
                    into a truck. But the stolid, mumbling, upwind 
                    flight of the blimp each morning most brings 
                    you to mind - outward bound for Nadorp,
                    Iles des Sourds, Mangiare. Most of your countries 
                    had just achieved independence, or had steadily 
                    reclaimed themselves from cold ocean and sky. 
                    They linger at the margins of our maps. 
                    Cancelled on yellowed envelopes, or fixed
                    like stars to black collector sheets, tinctured
                    in the watercolor you said could not be labored, 
                    their stamps commemorate our love of minor 
                    beauties, perishable things. In the full panes
                    of your exotic issues, made of tiny, certain strokes 
                    and pastel fogs, I recognize myself, the boy
                    who wanted everything arrayed, passed through 
                    imagination's tender lens, orderly as the leaded 
                    green and mustard meadows tilting on a wingtip, 
                    where long archipelagos of shadows slowly drift.