Midwest Light

Somehow it's flat yet bright; yellow and clear,
illuminating almost to the point
of making what it touches on appear
garish, too well-defined. It can anoint
a rower done by Eakins with its stark
tonalities: the whole scene is distinct—
the distant bridge, the clouds, the shoreline park,
the sculler who has looked at us and blinked
in the glare; or Hopper's Sunday morning street,
the doors too dark, the bricks showing too red
as light interrogates its crevices
in the upper stories where the sun has bled—
a light as flat and level as the lay
of the land it casts its glow on day by day.