-interpretations of the commotion during the “Foote Street” sessions-

strange things are happening off to my left.

maybe a deranged lunatic is hopping the fence to a new territory.

maybe the calico cat next door has found its way over the top

seeking another non-nutritious snack.

could be a different painter is coloring a different guy who looks like me.

maybe our wives are back there planning to "sap and impurify

all of our precious bodily fluids"–– could be the wives have fallen in love,

each testing the warmer waters of the other.

something's going on off to my left beyond the fence.

I'm alone within the delirium of my own intervention. 

I’m the subject standing on a lawn neatly mowed to community standards.

one could say I've simply landed here between critical appointments.

––behind me the artist's kids are splashing in their wading pool.

the dogs, Daisy and Daphne are running around like maniacs,

their broad, pink tongues flapping before the wind of their own making.

maybe the childhood friend who drowned at the ledge in 1953 is behind the fence

beckoning me "to come" like Ahab, hog-tied to the broadside of the whale!

––I'm the subject standing for a portrait of myself painted by another's hand.

I appear to be clothed, or am I naked below the hemline? or am I nude?

(there is a specific difference between the terms, you know.)

"Foote Street Portrait" / Leonard Dufresne  / May, 1974.

The "bodily fluids" line is nabbed from Sterling Hayden's, whacky,

phenomenal performance as Brig. General Jack D. Ripper

in Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove."