Wallace Stevens left here every morning
to walk to work.

Thirteen stones now delineate his commute.

*


I started backwards, at the office,

on a Saturday morning in late January,
the world dormant and nondescript.

As I walked,

I passed through successive decades of
changing architectural taste.

Each was briefly

isolated in its moment:

Art Deco; Gothic and Georgian Revival;
some responses to Le Corbusier.

The last snowfall persisted in uneven, blackened heaps
between the houses and the businesses. Soon

some would be made white again.

*

Up ahead, the Connecticut River,
a big half-frozen current—

in fact it is not a river

but a little stream, Wash Brook.
Across it

wealth and green space.

A tree grows through the glass coach

partially buried in someone’s front yard pachysandra.

*

It is not to be seen beneath the appearances
That tell of it ...

          Space-filled, reflecting —

A round window in the gable, like an eye.