Garrowby Hill

an ekphrastic poem and a tribute to David Hockney

Garrowby Hill by David Hockney (1937–2026), MFA Boston.

Garrowby Hill

Down from the high hills 
	the purple road flows
		twisting and leaping 

	like a gleeful girl 
		in a new twirl dress.

Down down down from the wolds
	into the patchwork  
		valley between fields 

	fearfully tiger-
		striped, new-plowed furrows
			 rippling contours.

Down between the rows 
	of sentinel trees 
		alert red boles
			standing at attention 

	their green canopy 
		shields the roadbanks, 
			shadows green hill’s feet.

The tumbling road dreams
	itself a river
		running towards the sea.

The dazed driver dreams 
	she’s floating adrift 
		on Huck’s wondrous raft, 
		
	cataracting down
		into a color- 
			saturated valley. 

Lost in heaven-dreams, 
	the blue and gold, green
		and violet landquilt 

	rises up before 
		her in glorious waves
			of slow turquoise haze
		
		only to fade fog-
			 like into bank-rolls 
				of distant cloudscapes—

Garrowby Hill Museum of Fine Arts Boston, July 2016, photo by Melanie Bettinelli

We saw David Hockney’s Garrowby Hill at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 2016. It was hanging around the corner from the elevator down to the Garden Cafe. We stopped to admire it on our way down for lunch.

My oldest daughter was quite enamored of it and a decade later the postcard still hangs among the collection next to her bed.

I wrote the first version of this poem in 2020 when I saw the painting on Facebook and recognized it as an old friend.

Then this past week I learned that David Hockney had died and it seemed time to brush off this poem again.

I had a feeling in 2020 that I wasn’t done with the poem and I still have that feeling now, but I’ve messed around with it a bit and I think this version is a at least a little bit better than the first. So here it is, my tribute to David Hockey, may he rest in peace.