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One year ago, I posted this:
Most trees have leafed out for two or three days.
Each leaf unfolding in place to fill its space, green;
But the trees that flowered are wilting now,
Bold blooms shrinking to leave more space between,
Dwindling to stipples along each bough.
Superimposed: a lacy screen, damascened,
Patches on a slate background--the dripping sky--
Grey except at some hidden place where a break
Must let the sun flood up to certain high
Shingles, a wire, a spire that's a streak
Of brilliant white. All silent, a still sheen,
Sheer, stretched thin to fade or end in a blaze.
It was a different time. Also a different place: I wrote it in our usual home in Cambridge, MA, but we have been sheltering for weeks in West Tisbury on Martha’s Vineyard.
I will say one thing for the poem: it is precisely described. “Wire” and “spire” are convenient rhymes, and they probably look forced, but I actually watched the slender white spire of Memorial Church and a telephone wire, both lit from below by a band of setting sun breaking through low clouds.