I’ve been reading in this collection of Jane Kenyon’s poems. In this one, “Afternoon in the House,” she’s noticing something subtle in the air. It wafts around her as she seems to be focusing on other things, but out of the corner of her eye, she’s aware of it — and at just the right moment, she reaches out and nets it with words. Maybe because it’s an afternoon poem, I think of Emily Dickinson’s certain slant of light, but Kenyon’s treatment of it is more this-worldly (?); she’s as alert to the world without as the world within, and she locates her poem astride both.

It’s quiet here. The cats
sprawl, each
in a favored place.
The geranium leans this way
to see if I’m writing about her:
head all petals, brown
stalks, and those green fans.
So you see,
I am writing about you.

I turn on the radio. Wrong.
Let’s not have any noise
in this room, except
the sound of a voice reading a poem.
The cats request
The Meadow Mouse, by Theodore Roethke.

The house settles down on its haunches
for a doze.
I know you are with me, plants,
and cats–and even so, I’m frightened,
sitting in the middle of perfect
possibility.

Winslow Homer, On the Fence