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A Piano At Evening

Today's poem is by Thomas Carper, who lives in Cornish and taught poetry and creative writing for many years at the University of Southern Maine. He's published three books of metrical verse, Fiddle Lane, From Nature, and Distant Blue.

In speaking about his work he said, "I think the principal influence of my life in poetry was being born years ago at a time when rhymes and meter were everywhere... in children's verse... hymns in church.. national songs... and poems studied in grade school.  

A Piano at Evening
by Thomas Carper

The music she’s performing, while the sun
Sinks down, comes softly through an open door
Into the evening calm, and has begun
Altering all we thought we’d known before.
The bushes by the porch, a dusty green
Throughout the inattentions of the day,
Now look more deeply colored, with a sheen
That glimmers as we pause to hear her play.
And now the fine proportions of a tree
Are vivid. While arpeggios declare
Her mastery of the difficult, we see
New symmetries, as vistas everywhere
By slow astonishment are rearranged.
We walk on toward a growing darkness, changed.

Poem copyright © 2012 Thomas Carper.
Reprinted from Creator, by permission of Thomas Carper