POEM
The Pond at Dusk
Jane KenyonA fly wounds the water but the wound
soon heals. Swallows tilt and twitter
overhead, dropping now and then toward
the outward-radiating evidence of food.
The green haze on the trees changes
into leaves, and what looks like smoke
floating over the neighbor’s barn
is only apple blossoms.
But sometimes what looks like disaster
is disaster: the day comes at last,
and the men struggle with the casket
just clearing the pews.
Jane Kenyon, “The Pond at Dusk” from Collected Poems. Copyright © 2005 by the Estate of Jane Kenyon. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org.
Source: The Boat of Quiet Hours: Poems (Graywolf Press, 1986)
New Hampshire's poet laureate at the time of her untimely death at age forty-seven, Jane Kenyon was . . . MORE »
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