A Suburban Spring Evening

"Love is the last light spoken."

I'm either too tired or drunk
to continue reading poetry by the dying
Spring day light; waning
as evening approaches the gloaming
sun dims.

I can still see the blossoming
plum tree across the street, exploding
whites and dusky yellows iridescent
against drab background of model homes.

Listen.  The sun is setting in suburbia
and children are finishing their Sunday evening movies.  Listen.

I turn to poets' voices reading to me.

Dylan Thomas awakes me to the vivid 

and wild  barbaric nature of poetry (of words);

stirs me to the quick.

Robert Frost brings me down to the synecdoche

of poetry; the whole of his experiences

and his woods.  I prefer reading Frost while it storms outside,

horizontal rain obstructing my view of blossoming plum trees.

W.H. Auden elevates and stirs my imagination:

the pomp and circumstance and traditionalism.

Hearing his voice reciting villanelles

speaking to the importance of simplicity and a simpler era;

staves off chaos with reverence.

I shall learn my mother-tongue.