NEAR PROVIDENCE 8.12.20

I spotted a brace

of swans bobbing in the Bay.

30 F. My eyes watered.

So white in the gray.

Small waves crested with foam re-

placed each other, the

two swans over it.

I couldn’t get over it.

The wind burned my ears.

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.

One thought on “NEAR PROVIDENCE 8.12.20”

  1. The subjective consciousness of poet in poetry becomes part of the gift of being as we read the poem. Text isn’t everything, the world isn’t just thought, and is so vivid and alive, just being becoming a miracle (I can’t get over it). The fierce yet teasingly loving otherness of reality as gift emerges in the end (the wind burns my ears). (One may think of the arguably distinctive charactericic of Christian contemplation as a self-displacing dialogue with the loving origin of reality more than as a self-emptying as such. the poem seems peculiarly perfect for Advent as the season of reflective preparation.)

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