Looking at Edward Hopper’s People in the Sun

The light falls on empty faces,
empty spaces, sunbathers of a landscape
of faraway ridges and a golden veldt.

In chairs as stiff and formal
as a suit and tie, shoes and socks,
scarf and hat, even with a pillow
one of them doesn’t look relaxed.

The man in the back, who reads a book,
what exactly is his story?

And is that porch they sit on shadowed
in an answer to what’s behind those ridges
or those windows?

(And what of the female face we cannot see?)

What line divides us?
What distance between who we are
and how we look?

The color blue and all the light
cannot disguise their faces, covered up
in what they do not want
to tell us or to see.