A Ride in the Country

Right about now we’re standing somewhere out in the sticks in front of an unlikely monument looking at its polished jet surface, bit of a reflection coming off, maybe just a glint of late October light, the laser-engraved scene sharply etched upon the black granite face, quite unnerving at least at first glance because it seems vaguely familiar yet escapes comfy certainty, till recognition dawns: we’re right in the middle of this very Arcadian scene, or rather on its edge, what you could say is somebody else’s eternity set in stone, with its old white church—the one we passed on our way in—or its image anyway, all we need to do is turn our heads a bit and we’ll see the prototype just down the hill along with the rock wall and the tall trees, Norway spruce, their weeping limbs providing just the right kind of shade for a place like this with all its worn markers, and beyond that—see it!—the white fence that borders the farm with its red barn and expanse of lawn, where if we headed in that direction would lead to the very spot from which this pastoral scene was captured by the unknown artist, and the landscape would present itself in its original form: the barn, the expanse of lawn, the fence, the church, the towering trees, the hard-to-see markers huddled in shadow beneath weeping limbs—everything portrayed on the tablet would be right there for us to discern for ourselves, except of course the young man (protagonist or figment of this secondhand tale) depicted pushing his sporty motorbike in our direction, heading out for one last ride, his good dog lying close by, the look on his doggy face saying “Don’t go! Don’t go! I love you!” though, to judge from the monument’s inscription, the young man did not return home from that ride, instead found his way into this stony lonesome scene we’ve been considering just now in this charming rural setting happened upon while we were heading somewhere else.