Lorraine Capparell © 2007 All Rights Reserved
Lorraine Capparell © 2007 All Rights Reserved
Reading Thoreau
I know this new scene
of windblown snow now smoothed
under moonlight outside
my window would have pleased
Thoreau, whose comforting
words I had been reading once again
earlier in the evening.
He might have liked every detail—
these thin birch trees
leaning beneath the great weight
of winter’s weather, a white
backdrop of landscape scarred
only by their darker arms,
the slim shadows of each limb
reaching out toward one
another, that gray oval of ice
opening like an empty
bowl below them, and the far stars
filtering through the black
branches like blooms of winter fruit.
Edward Byrne is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently Tidal Air, published by Pecan Grove Press. His work has also appeared in numerous journals, including American Literary Review, American Poetry Review, American Scholar, Missouri Review, North American Review, Quarterly West, and Southern Humanities Review. He is a professor in the English Department at Valparaiso University, where he edits Valparaiso Poetry Review.