BEAUTY IS A REAL THING, I’VE SEEN IT

If only those parakeets would settle
A little nearer to where I’m sitting, instead of at the tops of far-off
     trees, this morning
Would be so much more remarkable.
One could watch the blackbirds, I suppose, peck their ways like
     Oxford dons across
The flagstone paths and lawns, or the swallows, or the sparrows,
Or the crows. But those birds are so plain—, so…painfully
     available.
No, only those parakeets will do and they will not do
What I want them to. In this, they are like everything else in the
     world.
Every beautiful thing.

-Jay Hopler

I’ve begun listening to replays of Garrison Kiellor’s The Writer’s Almanac on Substack. That is where I heard the poem above. In reading further about the poet, I discovered that he died only last year, at the age of 51. Once when he was asked which five books he would never part with, he included this one:

“The Complete English Poems by John Donne. When I write, John Donne is the mentor who leans over my shoulder and questions my line breaks, my syntax, whether or not my music is rising and falling as it should.”

Rest in peace, Jay Hopler.
I hope you and John Donne are
now hearing the music together,
in kairos time.