Reverie in Open Air

In honor of National Poetry Month, Lifetime Learning is featuring poems written by esteemed faculty during April. “Reverie in Open Air” is the third featured poem by Rita Dove, 1993-95 U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-06 Virginia Poet Laureate, 1987 Pulitzer Prize winner, and University of Virginia Commonwealth Professor in the Creative Writing Program in the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

REVERIE IN OPEN AIR

I acknowledge my status as a stranger:
Inappropriate clothes, odd habits
Out of sync with wasp and wren.
I admit I don’t know how
To sit still or move without purpose.
I prefer books to moonlight, statuary to trees.

But this lawn has been leveled for looking,
So I kick off my sandals and walk its cool green.
Who claims we’re mere muscle and fluids?
My feet are the primitives here.
As for the rest – ah, the air now
Is a tonic of absence, bearing nothing
But news of a breeze.