What Brueghel Might Have Painted But Did Not, by George Franklin

What Brueghel Might Have Painted But Did Not 

In the courtyard, men are unloading wagons, and there’s 
A horse waiting to have his saddle removed, to be 
Rubbed down and given oats or autumn hay.
One merchant talks to another, perhaps his partner.
They wear thick wool cloaks, and their gloves are soft leather.  
They do not notice the horse or the men in the courtyard.  
They’re concerned with important things: how to get a load 
Of lumber to Antwerp, what it means to have such an early 
Snowfall, the Baltic amber someone is offering for sale.  
The silversmith at the inn kept talking about it.  He’d had 
Too much to drink, but still….  On their shoulders, 
You can see white specks of snow starting to melt.
The horse paws at the paving stones, untended.

George Franklin

George Franklin practices law in Miami and teaches poetry workshops in Florida prisons.  He has a new collection of poems, Remote Cities, coming out later this year from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, and he and Ximena Gómez have a new jointly written and translated dual-language collection, Conversaciones / Conversations, also scheduled for later this year from Katakana Editores.  His website is https://gsfranklin.com/.
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