


You have rented an apartment. You come to this enclosure with physical relief, your heavy body climbing the stairs in the dark, the hall bulb burned out, the landlord possibly a fatalist. In the apartment leaning against one wall, your daughter’s painting of a large frilled cabbage against a dark sky with pinpoints of stars. The eager vegetable, opening itself as if to eat the air, or speak in cabbage language of the meanings within meanings; while the points of stars hide in the dark upper half of the painting. You can live with this. ...Ruth Stone