Notes on the Painting, Gas, by Edward Hopper, by Mark Trechock

Gas, by Edward Hopper (USA), 1940.

Notes on the Painting, Gas, by Edward Hopper


Dawn or dusk, the incandescent
light seeps across the cement 
in pools with edges.


A red winged horse 
flies like a flag above 
the scene but cannot move,
except to rattle in the wind
like a Model T.


The attendant has lost his hair.
He is dressed up for the task
of keeping the pumps ready
and the cans of oil displayed.


Horses do not have wings,
he may be thinking. 


He may be thinking 
of morning in a stable
at a farm down the road, 
somewhere beyond the trees
that hover in the distance,
and of his mental inventory
of the equipment of riding 
and hauling—harness, bit, 
stirrups, saddle, whip. 


He may be pondering the way
his hands seem unsuited
to the new forms
of mastery, and how
his world of service
may disappear, just as the hair
has already disappeared
from his head.


No one is on the road for now,
but all the tools of loneliness 
and mental fatigue 
are laid in place.    


Mark Trechock
​

Mark Trechock has been writing and submitting poems since 1974. He has lived in Dickinson, North Dakota since 1993, and retired in 2012 from the grassroots community organizing project, Dakota Resource Council. After a 20-year hiatus in writing for publication, Trechock resumed submitting his work last year. Since then, he has placed more than 30 poems in a variety of magazines, including Canary, Limestone, Wilderness House Literary Review, Badlands Literary Journal, El Portal, and Off the Coast. Three of his poems appeared in the book Fracture, a multi-author book on the impact of hydraulic fracturing in the oil and gas industry.