Listening Long and Late Quotes

“Now I live alone
in a house Time traded me house for
house,
until I learned grief also is a kind of clutter:
drive one grief out the door,
two others knock, seeking a place within.
And though too late, I ask for her
forgiveness,
who hated whatever tarnished or made dim
the light and luster of common things:
lamp, glass vase, the figure in a
photograph,
wood grain of table, braiding in a rug—
this rag rug I took from memory
and put into a poem, that I might see it, as
before,
dancing its tiny fires into the morning’s
early slant of light.”
― Peter Everwine, Listening Long and Late

“This morning, in a jelly glass on my table,
a handful of the season's first violets—
a gift from the garden of a dear friend.
Old age, I'm told, has a discernible odor.
Who would have thought mine
would be so delicate,
so piercing sweet.”
― Peter Everwine, Listening Long and Late