The painter arrives in Rockland on a listing steamship
his wife Jo disappointed with dreary Ellsworth
They rent a room in a faded Victorian
from the improbably named Asenath Achorn
He’s visited Maine before, but this fine old place
enchants him—the captain’s home on Talbot Avenue
mourning doves flying over empty clotheslines
the limestone quarries that remind him of New Mexico
He places his easel in the South End
and finds a long-abandoned boarding house
the way Mrs. Achorn’s home might look in a decade
The painter tries to capture how this haunted house
slopes and slumps but spots a child in the grass
Adorable, yes, but ruining his painting of abandonment
so he asks Jo to shoo him away with fifty cents
the boy takes both quarters but races to the painter
a cheap sketchbook in hand and explains that
his name is Andy and that he just
finished drawing the house, too
“But I added skeletons!”
It’s true – pale bony figures are crawling out
of the windows of this house. The painter
writes a note on a blank page
“Ghoulish but promising—Ed Hopper”