“A ‘yes’ can come from the silence of being as nothing.” William Desmond G&B 136.
A day so still so bright / only the shadows of trees
show the water’s wrinkles / with what inhuman ease
the tide goes out / a contrail’s vast worm
stretches across the pond / the gist of inner form
revealed in these happenings / glints now from an empty
Canada Dry on the rocks / to the other boundary
About Tom
Lately managing editor of Single Island Press, Portsmouth, Thomas D’Evelyn (PhD comparative literature, University of California, Berkeley) has had a long career in editing, teaching, and writing. While in graduate school he taught 8th and 9th grade at The Academy, a private school in Berkeley California. After Berkeley, he was books editor of The Christian Science Monitor in the 1980s. In the 90’s, he worked in two positions in publishing: as general humanities acquisitions editor at Harvard University Press, and as managing editor at Boston University. Meanwhile, he ran a book agency, publishing works in sociology, history, and literature. Since the 90s, he’s been deeply involved in adult continuing education, both at Brown University and as a private consultant. He now works out of his home in Portsmouth, NH. He blogs at http://tomdevelyn.info/
There’s delightful wit in “on the rocks” in that last line! And I guess I could contrast the hint of sparkle in the reference to Canada Dry with the opening promise of “a day so still so bright”. Or I could infer something about death and the beyond from the closing mention of that other boundary. But I feel this is probably reading too much into the lines. In the main, I read this as an immediately accessible and pleasing portrayal of a quiet and brilliantly sunny scene, with intimations of something beyond the surface for those who will stop and look and consider. There’s movement in the natural world (wrinkles on the water in the shadows of trees), and in human life (both present in the airplane’s contrail reflected and past in the empty bottle) … but above all, that wonderful sense of tranquillity that you’ve given us again in a simple, economical, perfect composition!