Here's a small canvas painted by my great-
grandmother Caroline
I think while still a girl although according
to his scrawl on the backside my grandfather
thought 1877 to be a likely date
that would have made her twenty-two
but my guess is
it was the year she toured the continent
still in her teens
her parents keeping her
closely in tow
the painting is remarkable in its precision
in the foreground a detailed depiction
of a Swiss chalet
and then the mountain
looming huge and white
beyond the dark green hills
that slope to a rough V
just where the valley ends
still further back another range
less clearly outlined
but hardly less imposing
like a great wave
that follows on another
the image stirs in me
a kind of dread
like Ahab's whale caught in the act of breaching
the contrast of the quiet human dwelling
and the towering white presence
is too dramatic to be simply beautiful
it strikes me as an image of the patriarchy
in a deeply patriarchal age
and wonder what dear Caroline
was feeling as she traveled with her father
the somber Reverend Usher
through a landscape whose harsh beauty
and transcendent power
must have been
like nothing she had known