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Reverie in Open Air

By Rita Dove b. 1952 Rita Dove

I acknowledge my status as a stranger:

Inappropriate clothes, odd habits

Out of sync with wasp and wren.

I admit I don’t know how

To sit still or move without purpose.

I prefer books to moonlight, statuary to trees.

But this lawn has been leveled for looking,

So I kick off my sandals and walk its cool green.

Who claims we’re mere muscle and fluids?

My feet are the primitives here.

As for the rest—ah, the air now

Is a tonic of absence, bearing nothing

But news of a breeze.

Source: Poetry (March 2003).

Biography

Rita Dove was born in Akron, Ohio in 1952, the daughter of one of the first black chemists in the tire industry. Dove was encouraged to read widely by her parents, and excelled in school. She was named a Presidential Scholar, one of the top one hundred high-school graduates in the country and attended Miami University in Ohio as a National Merit Scholar. After graduating, Dove received a Fulbright to study at the University of . . .

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