Today when I sat in my study
and every word seemed used up,
I tried to imagine myself
as the room without me in it.
The three windows were all
equally ready to receive
sun and shade. When
the morning arrived at
the eastern one, lightening
the dark green leaves on the lilac
just outside, the south-facing
windows felt for the sun
even before it turned the corner
of the house. I came close to being
as transparent as the windows
as I listened to maple leaves
in the wind, a catbird
that likes to sit in the lilac’s shadows,
and a phoebe in the sun;
catbird, lilac, shade, phoebe, sun,
even the rug’s green-gold vines coming alive
in late afternoon sun, all meant
exactly the same thing.
And I saw clearly I could not be
the light that knew nothing of itself
or the windows passing the light
from outside in, and I gave thanks,
returning to my desk
in the room continuing to make
something out of what is always here.

Robert Cording is the Barrett Professor of English at the College of the Holy Cross. His most recent collection of poems is Common Life (2006).

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