Variation on a Landscape
     after David Hockney’s A Bigger Puddle Near Kilham

Start with the riven tracks tuned by rain.
Start with the arteries of fall. With this: the cartilage
of trees, their skulls filling with light, filling
with blue accomplishment.

Start with the bleeding clay, its haemorrhage of soil.
Start with the field beyond the field, the track
narrowing there, a meadow the path dreams
in a rising arm of rain.

Start with a puddle of rain, its lens reflecting
the tree’s spent doctrine.
Start with the eye, this muddied pupil.
Start with its indifference.