Luminosity

Oil Painting by Judy Reynolds: Winter Harbor Field

There is a certain slant of light

On Winter Afternoons

That oppresses like the heft

of cathedral tunes

Emily Dickenson

.

The Skylight

by Seamus Heaney

You were the one for skylights. I opposed
Cutting into the seasoned tongue-and-groove
Of pitch pine. I liked it low and closed,
Its claustrophobic, nest-up-in-the-roof
Effect. I liked the snuff-dry feeling,
The perfect, trunk-lid fit of the old ceiling.
Under there, it was all hutch and hatch.
The blue slates kept the heat like midnight thatch.

But when the slates came off, extravagant
Sky entered and held surprise wide open.
For days I felt like an inhabitant
Of that house where the man sick of the palsy
Was lowered through the roof, had his sins forgiven,
Was healed, took up his bed and walked away.

Definition #209 Attention

Oliver Puzzles with Don
May 2015

Kathleen Jamie
“When we were young, we were told that poetry is about voice,

about finding a voice and speaking with this voice,

but the older I get I think it’s not about voice, it’s about listening and the art of listening,

listening with attention.

I don’t just mean with the ear;

bringing the quality of attention to the world.

The writers I like best are those who attend.”

Seamus Heaney, Annie Dillard, Elizabeth Bishop are writers who “attend.”