HOME /  Poem :  A weekly poem, read by the author.

"Just a Tranquil Darker"

Listen to John Hodgen read this poem.


The old woman asks if she can have her sunglasses just a tranquil darker,
and the optometrist, without blinking an eye, does not trifle with her,
says he can do that, says he'll take care of that for her.
And I think for a moment he is William Wordsworth listening to Dorothy,
her spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, her perfect tranquillity. 
Or maybe he is God himself, the great optometrist, or at least that dim image
we strain to see of the omniscient god who mostly does not trifle with us. 
The occasional hat flown off our heads, perhaps, the tossed banana peel
with the businessman's wingtip approaching, the hurtling safe heading
down for our heads, all of us so intensely looking elsewhere, as if our lives
were God's New Yorker cartoons, all his back issues stacked up, the ones
with the Elizabeth Bishop poems, teetering, in his waiting room.
 
Mostly He gives us our due, God, or Wordsworth for that matter, for the things
we choose to believe in, the things we say we'll see if we can do, like loving
each other, like being true, like the woman who accompanies her husband,
the lawn mowing man, and sits on the steps of the houses he goes to.
(See her, by the daffodils?)  She watches him moving from row to row,
loves the ease with which he moves, sees the lawn changing right before
her eyes, like some eye chart of I's and E's slowly coming into view,
her love for him the one thing that is perfectly clear.
It is as if they live in some peripheral light that is always glowing,
that we can see sometimes, like a lark that flares up suddenly
out of the corner of our eyes, somehow always lifting
from this cock-eyed part of the world, away from the glare,
to some other place where everything is just the way we want it,
just a tranquil darker.

MYSLATE
MySlate is a new tool that you track your favorite parts Slate. You can follow authors and sections, track comment threads you're interested in, and more.

John Hodgen's Grace won the 2005 AWP Donald Hall Prize in Poetry.

For Slate's poetry submission guidelines, click spacerhereyeshyperlinkPoetry SubmissionsSlate reads new poems from Oct. 1 to April 30. Manuscripts sent between May 1 and Sept. 30 will not be considered.To submit poems: Send, as a single attached document, up to three poems of no more than 50 lines each to editors@slatepoems.com. Use the poet's name for the subject line of the e-mail and for the title of the attachment. We prefer Word documents (.doc or .docx) to PDFs.Please include a brief, professional cover letter, including publication history, in the body of your email. Please limit submissions to one per poet per annual reading period. Simultaneous submissions are OK. Slate no longer accepts poetry submissions by mail. The email address editors@slatepoems.com is for poetry submissions only (or to notify editors of acceptance elsewhere of a poem under consideration at Slate). Other inquiries, etc., will not be addressed.10000false220061444537PMWednesdayJanJanuary161/4/2006 9:45:37 PM63271989937000000020061444537PMWednesdayJanJanuary161/4/2006 9:45:37 PM632719899370000000.Clickhere to visit Robert Pinsky's Favorite Poem Project site.Click here for an archive of "Poet's Choice" columns from the Washington Post.