BW35: Reverie in Open Air by Rita Dove

 

Happy Sunday! We are celebrating the 72nd birthday of  Rita Dove, born August 28, 1952 and poet Laureate from 1993 to 1995 and Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2004 to 2006. Dove has three lifetime achievement awards, won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, and is the only poet given both the National Humanities Medal in 1996 and the National Medal of the Arts in 2011.

Reverie in Open Air

by 

Rita Dove

I acknowledge my status as a stranger:   

Inappropriate clothes, odd habits   

Out of sync with wasp and wren.   

I admit I don’t know how   

To sit still or move without purpose.   

I prefer books to moonlight, statuary to trees.   

But this lawn has been leveled for looking,   

So I kick off my sandals and walk its cool green.   

Who claims we’re mere muscle and fluids?   

My feet are the primitives here.   

As for the rest—ah, the air now   

Is a tonic of absence, bearing nothing   

But news of a breeze.

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