Above the bright cove
where the lawns are coming back
to the old mansions,
leafblowers remove
the dead leaves snow preserved in-
including the silence.
As I walk around
I’m swept into the vacuum
domicilium.
Vacuum domicilium: “the doctrine that the colonists were entitled to the land because the Indians were not making full use of it”—Rosmarie Waldrop, A Key Into the Language of America (New Directions, 1994), xvii.
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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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