--- G C   W A L D R E P

Grain trailer like a Mark Rothko panel, its own chapel
barn-red, Jesus' disciples were criticized for chewing ears of wheat
as they walked through fields on the Sabbath.
That was not about theft, that was about hygiene
just as this is not about Rothko but about the "relentless banality"
of America's small towns. Some towns,
like some sects, are smaller than others. To walk through a wheat field
is to commit a cinematic prologue; to be dismissed from the hydraulics laboratory
is to be banished from the fable of interchangeable poltroons.
Any farmer knows this much.
To be American is to believe in exits.
An exit is an uncomplicated avoidance of the necessity of the collective.
An exit is a form of worship if approached consistently and in one direction.
Mark Rothko trusted in the amber waves of the premeditated color field.
Mark Rothko's paintings are un-American.