Poetry
The Mysterious Courtesy of Fondness
Christopher Howell
What could it mean, this room, a piece
of time
so much like others and so much
its own
disheveled particularity in the life born
to me
or given
or treed like an animal climbing away from fear?
Small, square, and hopeless, full
of light
for the sake of its windows, toppling and awry
with books, images and imaginary
doors, this room
accepts itself wearily, one old friend annoyed
by another but adjusting the curtain, proffering
the favorite chair because what else
is there now but the mysterious
courtesy of fondness?
I have been everywhere, flying this room
as though it were Spinoza’s scientia intuitiva
or an arrow shot blindly toward the wandering
soul. And now
here we are
together, whole, and not very sad.
Outside is snowy wind and a life of glass
breathing in its winter den.
The room and I
make ever so small a bow
to what is other
and wish good days and nights, for all of that,
and all of us, camped on the lonely plain.