Close to Us, by Cynthia Kolanowski

Breezing Up (A Fair Wind), by Winslow Homer (USA) 1876

Close to Us

I always focused on the clouds, the way they part in places across the canvas, as if to prove they hold back the sky. I often thought that if I stared at the scene long enough, I would become part of the scene—a fifth figure—and watch over the four as if to protect them from the sun. But they all wear hats, I’d remind myself, and by now must be inured to the tilt of the catboat. I sometimes forget that my father loved this painting, and that for many years a copy of it hung above the couch in our living room. After work, he’d lie down, read the afternoon paper, and fall asleep. Across the room, I would watch as he slept and imagine that the space between us was the dark water in the painting. If I had to, I knew I could swim across, and he’d wake. Mostly, I would search for him in the painting, thinking about how at one time he was a boy. Not the oldest one in red whose grip on the mainsheet creates a perfect angle from stern to sail, nor the one steering, but one of the younger ones, maybe the boy stretched across the bow, or, as I wanted my father to be, the one sitting starboard, back turned to the horizon, longing for home.

Cynthia Kolanowski

Cynthia Kolanowski is a poet, educator, and wishful gardener, who for many years called Colorado home. She received an MFA from the University of Michigan and has had work published in the Portland Review and Broad Street. Riding the parabola of midlife, Cynthia returned to her native Pennsylvania in 2021 and now lives in Scranton, where she serves as production advisor for River & South Review and co-directs Electric City Writers. ​