Author: Tom D'Evelyn

Tom D'Evelyn is a private editor and writing tutor in Portland OR 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.

Ooze

I suck on Hill’s line
‘Ageing is weirder than dy-
ing.’ Some ripe sentence!

A god’s distinction!
‘Weirder’ means other if you
know what I mean. Life

itself drips from the
sliced peach, the gold-red inner
surfaces. Beauty

maybe, life for sure.
And yet a fierce love of life
oozes from the pit.

Chorus

You feel the coming
snow as a change in how the
air touches your face.

Ironic caress.
The light holds its breath; a pause;
an intermission.

But we can’t walk out
before the show is over.
We are the chorus.

We are part of this,
relieved to be released to
our limited roll.

Dilate

Today’s lectio:
‘Old age yields to slackness in
the tuning of the

surface of things.’ Slack
the beauty of Les Murray’s
hospitable line:

Yes, I yield to that.
Promiscuity is grace
in an old man’s eyes.

We take it as it
comes. It soon goes. The quick smile
fades, softens, moistens,

embarrassed. Easy
come, easy go—-so dilate
the gifts of pleasure.

Heartland

I don’t believe it
when a poet as great as
Geoffrey Hill says the

‘heartland is heartless.’
It’s too slick. Valuelessness
projects the abject

self. The Earth suffers.
Love of life original
to our being here.

By ‘love’ I mean love
as other to ‘our loves.’ That
‘Is’ without image.

Is ontology
beyond the poet’s self? Be-
ing sings its heart out.

Temperance

Cold gray gritty day.
I watch the traffic, pour my-
self a second cup

of coffee. I miss
having a wife to go home
to, brute that I am.

I’ve been disciplined
not to make too much of big
things like life and death.

We live between them.
Surfaces matter. The small
pleasure of counting

syllables matters.
The playful flow of human
sounds engorges time.

Guitar

Poetry appears
as you practice your guitar.
No substitute for

practice if you want
poetry in your life. Your
fingers bleed at first.

Callouses appear
with passages that sound like
your guitar should sound.

Keep practicing. Let
family and neighbors call
you names. Your name calls

you from the hollow
of your guitar as passa-
ges pass on through you.

Human

Beauty of Thresholds,
you manhandled old man Yeats
raging in the dark.

Last night at the bar,
you knocked me sideways with a
brush of your softness.

I didn’t see you
on the way to the lou or
on your way back. You

come between myself
and the image I work at,
my book and my Jack.