This poem is by Peter Everwine, and I read it in the New Yorker way back in the Oct. 15, 2007 issue. I’ve kept that issue tucked away in one of my bags of poetry stuff, and I reach in every so often to read it. I think I’ll make a point this year — so many good intentions I have had in my life — to learn more about Peter Everwine. I’ve googled him now. Keep tuned for more about him from me, which thoughts will probably not give him the credit he deserves.

Aubade in Autumn

by Peter Everwine

This morning, from under the floorboards

of the room in which I write,

Lawrence the handyman is singing the blues

in a soft falsetto as he works, the words

unclear, though surely one of them is love,

lugging its shadow of sadness into song.

I don’t want to think about sadness;

there’s never a lack of it.

I want to sit quietly for a while

and listen to my father making

a joyful sound unto his mirror

as he shaves—slap of razor

against the strop, the familiar rasp of his voice

singing his favorite hymn, but faint now,

coming from so far back in time:

Oh, come to the church in the wildwood . . .

my father, who had no faith, but loved

how the long, ascending syllable of wild

echoed from the walls in celebration

as the morning opened around him . . .

as now it opens around me, the light shifting

in the leaf-fall of the pear tree and across

the bedraggled back-yard roses

that I have been careless of

but brighten the air, nevertheless.

Who am I, if not one who listens

for words to stir from the silences they keep?

Love is the ground note; we cannot do

without it or the sorrow of its changes.

Come to the wildwood, love,

Oh, to the wiiildwood as the morning deepens,

and from a branch in the cedar tree a small bird

quickens his song into the blue reaches of heaven—

hey sweetie sweetie hey.