The End of the Road
Where I live, winter
is known for deep snow, summer
for swans in the cove.
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.
NEAR PROVIDENCE 23.4.22
The appearance of
the snow-white swan hereabouts—
whole lot of walking.
NEAR PROVIDENCE 20.4.22
WORK IN PROGRESS
An ornamental
lemon tree, the patio
in dry Bakersfield—
boyhood companion-
ing cool solitude.
I’d sit out there and watch it.
Tiny white blossoms,
sour, grape-sized fruit, slow
slow invisible growth. This
taught me how to write.
NEAR PROVIDENCE 19.4.22
“…the radical soul … its landscape and inner domain.” Geoffrey Hill
Seagull’s cry over
the Bay. My radical soul
flashes beyond me.
NEAR PROVIDENCE 18.4.22
WORK IN PROGRESS
It takes some ego
to push yourself out the door
on a cold April
morning for a walk
and see crowding your neighbor’s
yard blazing crabap-
ple trees. Take your walk.
Other power will become
self power as you
pass exuberant
dogwood trees spreading the news:
Go slow: Nirvana.
NEAR PROVIDENCE 17.4.22
Holy Saturday.
When Jesus arrived in Hell,
it was quite empty,
until we heard the news.
There are other narratives.
We all talked at once.
Later I watched an
egret liftoff over me.
That empty fullness.
NEAR PROVIDENCE 14.4.22
WORK IN PROGRESS
I moseyed out to
a spot on the breakwater.
A sunny April
unseasonable
day for a look at the Bay.
But all I saw was
bareness —a raw stump
where an old twisted pine had
framed the immense blue.
The shock wore off as
I wandered away thinking:
O Maunday Thursday!
NEAR PROVIDENCE 14.4.22
WORK IN PROGRESS
Spring strains disbelief.
Deep chaos of Holy Week.
Gold forsythia
rampant, poverty
of imagination gifted
with the heart’s sudden
willingness to fall.
We wake from dreams of old loves,
glad to start over.
NEAR PROVIDENCE 11.4.22
WORK IN PROGRESS
“What has to be accepted, the given, is — so one could say — forms of life.” Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 226.
You’re light on my arm
today. Wind-blown clouds, sparkling
water—we meet there too.
We met late in life.
On breezy, light-filled Spring days
we’d take a walk. Rome
or Bath proposed perfection.
At home such perfect
days proposed Bath or
Rome. You’d lean on me, and now
I’m in Bath or Rome.
NEAR PROVIDENCE 9.4.22
“Thinking is forgetting differences.” Borges
[ The crucial equivocation on ”think” was a response to the commentary in Moeller and D’Ambrosio Genuine Pretending: On the Philosophy of the Zhuangzi (Columbia, 2017)]
I run into you
on my way to see the ducks.
“You think they’re happy,”
you say. ”Right,” I say.
“But you’re not a duck,” you say.
“As you say, I think;
if you knew how I think, you’d
see ducks are happy.”
Metaxyturn Diaries 