Anniversary by Sydney Lea

Anniversary

           …the pride and confidence of an absolutely invulnerable stupidity.
                     Stephen Crane, “The Blue Hotel”

When I look through the glass in our kitchen wood stove’s door,
and when I’m sufficiently tired, as I often am
in my later years, shapes can suggest themselves
and despite myself, I imagine they’re telling me something.

This morning, for instance, I made out a bouquet of flowers.
hot-orange dahlias, I thought, the kind my mother
started raising in her young widowhood.
Last evening after supper, I pictured a church

like the Roman Catholic one commanding a hill
above Lake Memphremagog, its architecture
elegant, a sign that you’re close to Québec,
where you’ll leave the Protestants’ plain white clapboard behind.

On some fairly recent day, I saw forked tongues
of fire, like the ones described in the Book of Acts
that told the disciples their words now bore the spirit
of God. But it isn’t Pentecost here. It’s winter.

These visions, to glorify them by such a name–
I wonder where they come from. What connects them?
I assume they must have something in common because
I’m the one, after all, to whom they present themselves.

I know that I must ward off self-importance,
that mine are not some prophet’s promptings,
no matter my wishes. My father died today
precisely sixty years back. I’ve mourned him since.

If my tongue were cleft and ablaze with godly power,
I’d speak to him. Maybe those wood stove flowers
(were they lilies, not dahlias?) and the spire on that looming church
are what brought his funeral to mind. Mere speculation.

It’s sad that everything’s speculation now.
It wasn’t always that way. There was a time
when in blissful arrogance, I fancied
that I could label all my world’s components,

interpreting each and every one exactly.

*

Sydney Lea is a Pulitzer finalist in poetry, founder of New England Review, Vermont Poet Laureate (2011-15), and recipient of his state’s highest artistic distinction, the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. He has published two novels (most recently Now Look, 2024), eight volumes of personal essays (most recently, Such Dancing as We Can, 2024), a hybrid mock epic with former Vermont Cartoonist Laureate James Kochalka called Wormboy (2020), and sixteen poetry collections (most recently What Shines, 2023). His new and selected poems is due in early 2027.