The Sudden Light And The Trees -- Stephen Dunn

Guest poem submitted by Sarah Korah:

I've seen just one poem by Stephen Dunn on Minstrels. Here's an attempt to
change the status quo :).

(Poem #1533) The Sudden Light And The Trees My neighbor was a biker, a pusher, a dog and wife beater. In bad dreams I killed him and once, in the consequential light of day, I called the Humane Society about Blue, his dog. They took her away and I readied myself, a baseball bat inside my door. That night I hear his wife scream and I couldn't help it, that pathetic relief; her again, not me. It would be years before I'd understand why victims cling and forgive. I plugged in the Sleep-Sound and it crashed like the ocean all the way to sleep. One afternoon I found him on the stoop, a pistol in his hand, waiting, he said, for me. A sparrow had gotten in to our common basement. Could he have permission to shoot it? The bullets, he explained, might go through the floor. I said I'd catch it, wait, give me a few minutes and, clear-eyed, brilliantly afraid, I trapped it with a pillow. I remember how it felt when I got my hand, and how it burst that hand open when I took it outside, a strength that must have come out of hopelessness and the sudden light and the trees. And I remember the way he slapped the gun against his open palm, kept slapping it, and wouldn't speak. -- Stephen Dunn

This is a grim poem. There's something ominously menacing in the image of a
man slapping a gun against his open palm.

I felt an almost palpable sense of relief towards the end of the poem. A
doomed sparrow finds strength in its hopelessness, the 'clear-eyed,
brilliantly afraid' poet nevertheless faces the sullen protagonist. Bird and
beast have already escaped. Something tells me that there's hope in the
sudden light and trees.

I was poignantly, and somewhat pointlessly, reminded of the lines 'All the
history of grief, An empty doorway and a maple leaf' when I read this poem.

About Stephen Dunn :

Stephen Dunn won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his collection
titled Different Hours. Dunn is currently a Distinguished Professor of
Creative Writing at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. He lives in
Port Republic, New Jersey.

Stephen Dunn was born in New York City in 1939. He earned a B.A. in history
and English from Hofstra University, attended the New School Writing
Workshops, and finished his M.A. in creative writing at Syracuse University.
Dunn has worked as a professional basketball player, an advertising
copywriter, and an editor, as well as a professor of creative writing.

Dunn's books of poetry include Loosestrife: New and Selected Poems,
1974-1994; Landscape at the End of the Century; and Between Angels.

Minstrels has run one of Dunn's poems before.
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1063.html