Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Boy

For Son, this week a high school grad.

After Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird, by Wallace Stevens.

Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Boy

Among the twenty pieces of furniture,

The only moving thing

Was the thumb of a boy

On the X-box controller.

II.

I was of three minds,

Like a stoop

On which sit three boys.

III.

A boy whirled on his bike in the neighborhood streets.

He was a small part of the pantomime.

IV.

A man and a woman

Are one.

A man and a woman and a boy

Are one.

I do not know which to prefer,

The beauty of inflections

Or the beauty of innuendoes,

The boy whistling

Or just after.

VI.

Icicles filled the long window

With barbaric glass. The shadow of the boy

Outside crossed it, to and fro. The mood

Traced in the shadow

An indecipherable cause.

VII.

O busy parents of the white picket fence,

Why do you imagine ivy leagues on brick?

Do you not see how the boy

Walks around the feet

Of the unknowns around you?

VIII.

I know noble accents

And lucid, inescapable rhythms;

But I know, too,

That the boy is involved

In what I know.

IX.

When the boy walked out of sight

Through the door of the school,

He marked the edge

Of one of many circles.

At the sight of boys

Driving through a green light,

Even the bawds of euphony

Would cry out sharply.

XI.

She rode over Connecticut

In a glass coach.

Once, a fear pierced her,

In that she mistook

The shadow of her equipage

For boys.

XII.

The river is moving.

The boy must be growing.

XIII.

It was evening all afternoon.  It was snowing

And it was going to snow.

The boy slept,

His limbs long on the couch.