Charles E. Burchfield, Writings, circa 1962

heat lightning – on the porch an old haggard grandmother and her daughter sit in a sort of stupor listening to the crickets, katydids & other insects singing their monotonous August dirge – a first quarter moon that threw sullen shadows under the bushes has long ago set in the S.W. over some hilly pasture – they think about the past with regret – at times a meteor scratches a white line across the indigo sky and is gone – the ground is warm – the air still vibrates with the day’s deadening heat to the far north heat lightning quivers and flashes fitfully among phantom clouds that hold no rain – the silence is profound because thunder is expected and never comes – make this the first sentence – along some road to the north running east & west, is a lonely farmhouse with a row of young maples in front of it

Charles E. Burchfield, circa 1962