REFLECTIONS

The window becomes a part

of his mind's history, the entrance

of days into it.

   Wendell Berry, "Window Poems, 16"

1 ~  Sunday Evening

A certain knowing and perspective have come

To the man from the fact his window is also

A door, and so what passes through his life,

Hours looking out from his desk as he works

To woods almost near enough to touch, is not

A clear separation but invitation - all that enters

His room he also enters - and outside his window

The rain and fog deepen; on his side he waits

To write his reflections, looking out to what is

Revealed, looking for the words to make a clarity.

2 ~  Monday Morning

The fog and rain drifted off overnight, and this

Morning his window opens on sunlight, dripping

Pines and birdsong.  Nine years of mornings now

He has come to this desk and window to begin

Again not the day but another life, until each

Beginning has become as familiar now as all that

Looks in on him as he writes of what his gradual

Knowing has come to allow, though knowing too

That much still seems diminished by his words.

3 ~  Monday Afternoon

The rain returns, and the fog, both gathering into

Deepening pools beneath the pines and shimmering

In a way he thinks it might seem from the other side

Of a waterfall, or how fish lean against the rippling

Surface of their own watery window, reflecting light

Or, like now, dull as the reflection in a tarnished mirror.

The window is his frame of reference for what he has

Become in this place he has made of what he seeks 

And of what has been lost, and in some way that he

Doesn't understand, he has become grateful for both,

Sensing a consciousness that is his and yet also outside

Of him, something not of his making but his receiving.

4 ~  Monday Night

Now a cold spring night settles softly on his window,

Swirling and shimmering from the old oil lamp and

Firelight within and whorls of fog smoking the glass

On the other side of this darkness he has come to,

Knowing a kind of comfort in, now in his years alone,

The night asking nothing of him and he little to give.

It is light that demands of him some last lightness

Of him that he no longer knows nor needs to seek,

Seeing himself in the window, the firelight and the fog.