Last Night, I Wanted To Share A Little Annie Dillard With You Poem by Dennis Ryan

Wednesday morning, April 19, 2023 at 8: 40 a.m.; Thursday morning, April 20, 2023 at 7: 44 a.m.; Saturday morning, April 22, 2023 at 7: 30 a.m.; Saturday morning, April 29, 2023

'I used to be able to see flying insects in the air …
Now I can see birds … I would like to know grasses
and sedges—and care.'
—Annie Dillard, Pilgrim At Tinker Creek, Ch.2 'Seeing'

Last night, I wanted to share a little Annie Dillard
with you, you being from the mountains, like me,
just farther South, and maybe West. I had mentioned
her name and Pilgrim At Tinker Creek the morning
we met, which for some reason now seems ages
ago, though, of course, it isn't—it's just that I sense
time passing differently at different times, times when
I put in my best efforts to be with someone, with you—everything slows down, time included, that slowing down
only seeming to lengthen time, its duration, the sense
that so much time is passing us by, though Time's clock—
reality—says differently. Well, last night it didn't work out—
some things in life almost never do—you not being home,
so I left a note inside your front door that I had come by…
And now, the following morning, early, I sit here at home
writing this poem "to make up for the lost opportunity",
that experience lost. And right now, I realize—I realize! —
this poem is almost writing itself; suddenly I realize just how much you mean to me. "Oh, what a sad Romantic, you",
I tell myself, putting myself back in place, like I did that bottle
of Castilian wine I enjoy sharing with or giving to my friends—
life is so much better by twos, threes and fours, isn't it?
You know. Yes, you know, telling me about the size of your family, the welcoming natures of your relatives in the mountains. (I sense so much more going on in between these lines right now, and I can't get these warm thoughts, feelings out of my head, this feeling of rightness; and wherever Annie proves
to be right now, I believe she would approve this poem's
rightness that matches us, our feelings, our two affections.)
The heuristic of this poem has proven to be so revealing:
I've learned much about myself—my true feelings for you.