THE POET
by Rose Gowen

          A man -- he was a painter, his name was John -- was having problems with chipmunks on his property. There was an unusually large number of them that fall. They dug up the daffodil bulbs in the garden, and they gnawed on the apples in the trees. They destroyed a roll of unprimed canvas in the studio. John worried they would get into the walls and chew on the wiring, so he set out traps.

          The traps did not kill them. When he caught a chipmunk, John drove it to the national forest some miles distant from his house, and released it there.

          One afternoon John's niece Sarah came to visit. She brought her new boyfriend.

          "You and Michael will like each other," she said. "Michael's a poet."

          John took the couple into the studio to look at his new work. "It's my Transformations series," he said.

          He showed them the triptych: three six foot square canvases depicting a group of pears in various stages of decay. "I was interested in the passage of time," he said, "You can do that with a triptych. Or, you can use it to describe different viewpoints on a single moment. It's a useful structure."

          Michael nodded.

          "It's kind of funny," Sarah said, "the way the pears sag and droop."

          "Then I wanted to explore scale." John showed them a canvas that took up a wall, filled with the image of a moldy lemon. "Monumental, isn't it?"

          Sarah laughed, and Michael stepped back, his arms crossed over his chest, turning his head from side to side.

          The newest piece was very small. A miniature of a flattened snake John had found by the side of the road.

          "In France," he said, "They don't say 'still life', they say 'nature morte' -- dead nature. That's what I'm interested in right now. Dead nature. The changing colors and textures and shapes of organic forms. The sagging, and seeping, and bulging; the sprouting of molds, the desiccation."

          John invited Michael and Sarah walk around the yard to check the traps before dinner. He'd caught a chipmunk behind the compost heap.

          "They like peanut butter," John said.

          He carried the trap up to the house and set it down by the garage, next to the rain barrel. The chipmunk flattened itself to the bottom of the cage, hyperventilating.

          At dinner, Sarah said, "I like your new paintings, Uncle John."

          "Thank you," John said. "And what do you think, Michael?"

          "They're beautiful. And terrifying."

          "But they're not morbid," Sarah said.

          "It's part of life," John said, "It's all about changes."

          After dinner, Michael excused himself and went outside.

          "He must be getting something from the car," Sarah said.

          She and John had coffee.

          "Do you like him?" Sarah said.

          "He's quiet."

          Michael returned to the house.

          "Coffee, Michael?" John called.

          Michael came into the dining room, holding his jacket in front of him, balled up. It was dripping.

          "What's wrong?" Sarah said.

          "It's for John. The chipmunk. I killed him in the rain barrel."