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1. Allan Lynch racing down Kuerner’s shorn hill.
2. I could have set the sunlight anywhere, but I did so where his shadow strides beside him.
3. Brown jacket buttoned by brass. The ear flaps of his aviator hat—a pardon against the cold.
4. What is anyone’s purpose in this world?
5. Beyond the post-and-wire fence, tall goldenrod grass. Patches of snow against the fence.
6. One season’s for planting, one for harvest.
7. Two wheel ruts lead away and up.
8. Pa refused a post as a war painter in favor of battles in his studio, with costumed models, and immortalized them. Lincoln, Franklin, Revere.
9. Killed at a train crossing where it crashed into his car.
10. Who ought paint the heroes now?
11. Sudden death happens in a gust and does not discern.
12. He taught me to see the world’s pageantry, the way watching two people braiding leaves of dried corn shucks is worth stopping for.
13. A train whistle no one sounded.
14. In an empty field, under the white sky, Allan’s open hand reaching for someone, something, a memory, or a grip on the brake, anything to stop it.
15. That the thaw will come is inevitable.
16. Whether or not I paint myself as the boy, the hill, or the snow I will not tell.