Don January 18th, 2010

XCVI

 

Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”

 

Whenever I’m back in Athens, I always come up this hill (North from campus before heading right and downhill over the Oconee River to pick up North Avenue to Hwy. 106 N, heading out of town toward Toccoa) to see if the vision is there.  But you have to live there and do it every day to have much of a chance of catching it.  I’m glad that once I did.

 

Sonnet XXXI

On What may be Seen while Looking

North from a Ridge-Top in Athens, Georgia

 

Looking up (as I have often done),

                You see three ridges marching North from here,

                 Unless the mist should melt them into one.

                 But on rare days—say, eight or ten a year—

When some storm’s maybe blown the air as clear

                As it can ever get, the sun goes down

                And in its rays obliquely seems to peer

                Across the ridges’ backs, as if it found

Some vision there worth staring at.  The town

                Grows silent as the day draws to its close,

                And one lone walker looks up from the ground

               And stops dead still and stares—and stares—and knows

The sun’s sight:  Empty air before his eye

                Splits open, and the mountains fill the sky.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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