Life With Wallace Stevens, My Sons Poem by Dennis Ryan

--dedicated to my son Devin Jin Ryan (born April 28,1983)

Tuesday, late morning, September 20,2022; expanded and revised beginning Thursday morning, Sept.22,2022 at 10: 51 a.m.; finished at 2: 36 p.m.

With Wallace Stevens. (Life) I am.
Our poems (are) in conversation. His.
Mine. And mine about him. I can't say
exactly how many, how much, if and when.
Only that they are. Are. Existing at present.
Have, had been. Will be in conversation? (That
to be determined...) Not all. But in many instances—
Yellow Afternoon. For instance—"The odor/Of earth
penetrates more deeply than any—" The Latest Freed Man.
"Tired of the old descriptions of the world..." and so forth.
The Man on the Dump. "One beats and beats for that what one
believes." Prelude to Objects. "Poet... From the sea...
Set up/The rugged black, the image"—(Bahamas: In A White
Coming On. From first poem in volume, "Image: This Spontaneous Process": "Image results from the succession
of sensations"; and next, title poem—to volume—"At sound... as dark tankers roll their black lengths across refinery docks.") —our poems intertwined—"Poet... We are conceived in your conceits." (As in "Correspondences" (p.43) "Queen Conch, King's Helmet"— "dripping trophies shaped by anonymous sculptors.") And The Poems of Our Climate. "So that one
would want to come back... Since the imperfect" yes, it
"is so hot in us." The imperfect. The flawed. All of us. Itsudemoいつでも Dokodemo どこでもAll parts of a world. (World's apart. America, Japan. 米国日本Japan, where Devin and Shawn were born, in Sapporo, Hokkaido, 札幌, 北海道 Kita-ku北区 enshi Byooin. 天使 病院 Hospital of the Angels. Angels sent— Yes to that, please do so, please.) Please ourselves. Our—. Yes, part. But only part. As Stevens wrote. Only a part. A part not part of a whole. Just part. Part. Only. Separate. Yet indivisible. The part left in. As when Stevens said, " ‘In the sum of the parts, there are only the parts—‘ "
On the Road Home. We are "always seeing" ourselves/
in part/at angles/never whole/impossible task to set—
(Prelude To Objects again.) My soul's code. (James Hillman.
Vide him. Read the book by. "Character is fate." We hold
the key within; must use it; be true to ourselves—yet change.
Real change. As much as we can, is possible. Will be.
Future progressive. To that—) No, not truth. Truths.
"There are many... [Are.] But they are not parts—"
No, not of; no, they are not parts of some greater truth.
All part. Parcel. Separate. A part. Divisible. Parts of
a World. And. And then Transport to Summer. And.
The Auroras of Autumn. And. The Rock finally. All.
Every single poem therein. All those divisible, indivisible
poems at the end. (Fragile. Fragility. Especially end of life.
Kim's career as a—) Yes, I am, was with Stevens then.
And. And now. For now. "Temporal". As an adjective—
jikan keiyoshi. 時間形容詞 Temporality. (In use/usage
usually "temporalities".) My Buddhist leanings, strands
of thinking, my belief system blended with/into the gospels
("Value for all things—..." 1 Timothy 4: 8 for example.)
And that poem of mine—We are happy for awhile, then...
notes, more notes, notations. Notes Toward A Supreme Fiction.
It Must Change. "He had to choose.... not a choice/Between,
but of.... the whole, the complicate, the amassing—" Yes,
amassing. I wrote a poem, once, beginning, "Love, I wrote,
beginning in the simple past tense, that love now, once then,
beginning in beginnings." (Remember, KJK? ...) About values—
what one values, people before places, Wallace—that corrections—
people before; first and foremost; we value them; their lives;
existent; existing, living right now, for today. And tomorrow?
"Successive happenings" Discrete Series. (The Materials.
This In Which. Of Being Numerous. And. Primitive.) I know
I value my life. Dearly. Dear ones. (Terms of Endearment.
"Honeyya". "Shawn kun". "Devin chan". "Hanna chan".
'Sophia zhavi' 'Fiona lass'. "Leonard san." "Zena female warrior".
Family cats and dog. Three of our pets—two cats, one dog. Injury to eyes. Killed. Gone early.) Our sons'? Their lives? Kim's. Hers?
All family members—extended as well. Successive, succ—happenings at present. Here, in Raleigh, North Carolina. Right now. Here, this— Present tense—yes, now. The things left in; the things left out; the relationship between what we know, and what we don't know—yes, what we don't know in the moment. Moment to Moment—as in Poems of a Mountain Recluse. Moments that follow 'wherever they go.'