Ode to Edward Hopper’s Hodgkin’s House

by Suellen Wedmore

Oil on Canvas: 1928

—viewed at the Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, Massachusetts: 2023

Because the sunlight brushed across the side
of this house lifts off the canvas
into the museum gallery, warming me
here where I am standing in this year
of war, flood, fire, and political angst,

and because the streak of gold on the unblemished picket fence
in front of the house brings back childhood summer days:
because here I sense the yearning of my own
unspoken architectural horizontals and verticals:
loneliness, my fear of change,

and because the soulful violet shadow dancing with the sun
in the center of the canvas is an artful pas de deux,
a premier danseur presenting his beautiful partner
on-stage in a one-hand lift;

because the scene’s robust greens vibrate
with a cello’s husky breath—no,
in this light’s dazzle it’s a piccolo’s summons
to me from above the chaos of life’s parade,

and because here, time has stopped—the house’s side-entrance
forever capped, frilled, and canopied, so that
for a moment I believe I will never again
need to turn to view the hands of a clock;

because, even though I read how Hopper reported,
All I want to do is to paint sun on the side of a house,

it’s because this portrait, rendered years before I was even born,
lays bare something about myself
that I want to understand…but don’t.