WEBVTT

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I'd like to read two more poems.

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I don't mean forever, I
just mean for tonight.

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We have a large picture
window in our living

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room, which looks out on the
Green Mountains in Vermont.

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And this poem is a meditation
while looking out at the Green

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Mountains at twilight when
the mountains have become

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a silhouette and
one can see the line

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that they make against the sky.

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It's a poem meditating on
that random image, that line

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in nature that seems to come
from nowhere and go nowhere,

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can have no particular design.

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Looking at that image while
at the same time sitting

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in the room and listening
to a Mozart Piano Concerto,

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the poem is attempt to mediate
between that random sense

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of nature and the controlled
and shaped sense of human art.

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I wanted to call it a
double concerto for mountain

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and orchestra, but I ended up
calling it more simply "Looking

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at a Mountain Range While
Listening to a Mozart Piano

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Concerto."

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"Looking eastward through my
picture window over the snow,

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the sun just down, I
see the mountain range

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hazing to one shade of blue.

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Now with the trees
obscured, it is

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a sweep of shape
darkening so flat,

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one might not recognize
a mountain range at all.

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Its silhouette is
just a wandering line,

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drawn by a hand that might
be falling asleep or else so

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free that every arc it
makes of rise or fall

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expresses the contentment
that it feels at heart,

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although it leads
nowhere but on,

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and might as well drift off into
another range of further blue.

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Brightly the piano
asserts its melody.

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The orchestra gathers
its colors to reply,

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true to the law that
everything responds,

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nothing is left unanswered,
that variation extends the self

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as if one's life were made
essential in a piano's theme,

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departing then returning
one to what one is.

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And now again it is
the piano's turn,

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and now the separate
instruments, again as one,

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move onward to their chosen end
beyond which nothing else will

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be desired.

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And so my ears pulse
back into themselves,

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my eyes returned to
seeing what they see,

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the mountain's silhouette--

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a floating line leading my
sight where visible blue ends.

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It is an end in thought--

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my life goes on.

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Here I am deciding what to
play next as you appear.

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Suddenly, I recall when I first
saw you 20 years ago playing

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your flute.

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I think of waterfalls
and moonlight,

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orioles in cherry trees.

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Your smile extends the
silence of your pause,

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and then, as if unsure
where to go next,

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you walk adagio past
me out the door,

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just as I hear the
piano enter in.

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The mountain's silhouette
is now less sharp.

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Something seems missing
as the record ends,

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spinning with a hiss
that empty space must

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make between the stars.

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I move the needle to
the start and light

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the lamp above my chair.

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There are no mountains
anymore, only my reflection

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in the picture window like
a surgeon's X-ray, ghostly

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and remote.

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I hear the introduction
once again.

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The piano sings so freshly
that I feel the reason why

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the orchestra replies.

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And you return, carrying the
flute your fingers have not

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graced for 20 years--

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as if a poem had
conjured up the past

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to ease the fear of
darkness and of chance.

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The one star in the sky is not
enough to light the mountain

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range where darkness holds the
shape my window frame provides.

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Once more, for
the strings' sake,

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the piano states its theme,
the violins are moved,

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they love their part.

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Although I cannot see the dark
beyond my mountain's dark,

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I won't leave love to chance.

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I watch you in the
window coming near

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as if to the conclusion
Mozart had in mind."

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