Pears on the Windowsill from Letters to a Stranger
Thomas James
This morning I have been remembering
How my mother's hands knotted one September
And then grew very still.
A girl is coming up the hill
With apples in her white apron.
The light moves outside her body.
Outdoors, the leaves of the pear trees
Are the color of a house in need of paint.
They are like enormous flakes of darkness.
Sunlight is smeared over the flagstones.
A worm is measuring a tomato leaf
As if it were the map of Italy.
The sun strikes my perfect skin.
My inheritors move in me
Like darkening water.
6 comments:
This poem changed the way I was breathing just now. It's so beautiful.
lovely...absolutely lovely. if i weren't in front of a class of high school students right now, i might even cry. (it's too early in the semester for that)
flakes of darkness, smeared sunlight --I love these phrases.
What I love here--in addition to its images, and the clarity of its music--is the inside/outside dialectic, which is teaching me something large.
Yes, I see this now. Also the interplay of light and dark--the knotted hands, the light on the girl, the dark of the house, the sun on flagstones. I think this mirrors the inside/outside. What I also admire is how economical this poem is and so full.
You're right, Pam. Thanks. More oppositions. Now I'm eager to look for more patterns.
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