I am inspired by Bruce's website and Bruce's brother Dennis, whose new book arrived in the mail the other day. It's called "Visiting Wallace--Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Wallace Stevens." The book is an impressive assemblage of an astonishing variety of poems and poets! Here is a poem from the book by Dennis and it even mentions a cat!
An Ordinary Evening
His house is empty when
He arrives--empty and
Quiet and large. Perhaps,
It is too large for one man
And two women. From
The window of his study
He can look toward the town
He travels to each morning
And returns each night.
It is winter and the slope of
His yard, so green six months
Ago, is now awash in white,
Patterned slightly by the paws
Of the neighbor's cat. Of the
Garden nothing remains but
The dried out sticks of roses
Trimmed low to the ground
And protruding some above the
Snow. He sits in his study
And thinks of the green of May
And red of June. He awaits
The return of his daughter and
The start of his dinner,
Hearty, he hopes, and hot. He
Dreams the sound of her feet
Upon the stairs, but realizes
That if he has fallen asleep he
Is now awake for she has entered
His room. He smiles,
Stretching forth his hands,
Hands that she steps forward and
Holds. He remembers how
He used to write to her mother
When he went to such distant places
As Greensboro and Elsie stayed
Here at home to guard the fort,
As they used to joke. Holly pulls
Slightly and he stands, shaky
At first, yet, recalling
The hikes he took last spring.
Maybe I will get to go outside this winter and leave paw prints in the snow. Susan and Bruce take me out (I take them out!) every day. Here I am in the front yard thinking about my book!
I have never been outside in the winter, in the snow. I have only stood on my stool at the kitchen window and watched the snow. Sigh. Just writing about the snow makes me think of those beautiful and poetic lines from James Joyce's "The Dead":
"Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther eastward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannaon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."
