Happy Birthday, W.S. Merwin!
As a lover of poetry, I get a daily email from The Writer's Almanac that showcases a poem a day. Here's the one I read first thing this morning:
Dew Light
By W.S. Merwin
Now in the blessed days of more and less
when the news about time is that each day
there is less of it I know none of that
as I walk out through the early garden
only the day and I are here with no
before or after and the dew looks up
without a number or a present age
I got excited about seeing this particular poet's name, because I picked one of his quotes as sort of an epigramatic way of linking THIS to writing and to the pencil upon the page. And today happens to be his birthday!
And I love this:
“When a poem is really finished, you can’t change anything. You can’t move words around. You can’t say, ‘In other words, you mean.’ No, that’s not it. there are no other words in which you mean it. This is it.”
I am now listening to this poem being read by Garrison Keillor on the Writer's Almanac site as night has fallen. Today is the first day I have ever read Dew Light, and then to hear it in the voice of Garrison Keillor brings me back to my childhood, listening to "A Prairie Home Companion" with my family. Take a listen!