In the beginning,
difference. The wonder of
it. Even without
makeup. Mornings in
bed. The cat between us slips
away only to
return when it’s safe.
Such perplexity of limb,
breath, hands, feet, hair, juice.
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.
Slam
The poetry slam
on the radio last night
was almost too much.
Yelling on both sides
of the proscenium. Dis-
appearance thereof.
All one howl. Okay,
I could have turned it off, it’s
a free country. Al-
most is close enough
to all. I kept on seeing
the face of some god.
Away
Love is a habit
stronger than grief. If I still
visit—-and I do—-
our old rendezvous
(the plural sounds the sameness),
the front of the house
smiles back at me, ducks
swim in the sun-shot willows,
Rome sweetens at dusk.
True, I sometimes glimpse
you walking away from me, you
being more than you.
Last
I don’t sit here seek-
ing some whole. My espresso
cools, the heat gone, bit-
terness hard to swal-
low. I sit between peril
of my nothingness
and the crux of speech-
lessness. If communication
happens, it’s beyond
me, my finitude
ruptured and opened by the
good of the last drop.
Coat
Everything goes.
What I mean is, grief passes,
leaving emptiness.
One maintains a face.
One is polite, though prone to
distraction, how she
shrugs on her old coat
to go, how one smiles to be
broken in by her.
Same
Here at the same place
at the same time of day it’s
not the same, ever.
Liberation from
the same justifies the ha-
bit, the same not same.
In the difference
God and the same together
bless my finitude.
Pierced
Call it soft apo-
calypse, the uncovering
of ambiguous
divinity in
time. No question of meaning.
My finitude pierced
by the beauty of
the thing. I’m put in my place.
My bare existence.
The way the wind pierced
my best jacket this Spring day
and the racing clouds.
