On the deck above
the city all that summer
I’d watch the empty
street below for you.
Let’s say I was between things;
you were my reason.
Sitting in the sun
was stupid and dangerous,
but you did appear
and the stairwell filled
with your steps and the hot squares
of the house with love.
Author: Tom D'Evelyn
Tom D'Evelyn is a private editor and writing tutor in Cranston RI and, thanks to the web, across the US and in the UK. He can be reached at tom.develyn@comcast.net. D'Evelyn has a PhD in Comparative Literature from UC Berkeley. Before retiring he held positions at The Christian Science Monitor, Harvard University Press, Boston University and Brown University. He ran a literary agency for ten years, publishing books by Leonard Nathan and Arthur Quinn, among others. Before moving to Portland OR he was managing editor at Single Island Press, Portsmouth NH. He blogs at http://tdevelyn.com and other sites.
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Metaxyturn Diaries 
…”the stairwell filled
with your steps and the hot squares
of the house with love.”
What a vivid moment, Tom. Perfect.
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Thanks, Mark. It’s a lot of fun fitting memories to meter, transforming them , watching the poem emerge from the fertile void.
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And the uber poem, that is the real experience: “You are the reason”: who can forget that? That is, the poem owes itself to the experience, the poet and the one for whom the poet looks and waits. Dear God, don’t flatten it into poetry!
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In the poem you do not flatten it. You elevate it and we readers respond from our own experiences of that love. What I am saying here is do not reduce the poem with all that fun talk. Let it move on its own wings, which are extradordinary and beautiful.
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