At the top of the hill
where Twain would write
for twenty-some summers,
the wind has a voice,
and in the distance, vague
echoes of life being lived
in the valley below. Sound,
like heat, rises and the music
of solitude here is no solo,
but an unrehearsed orchestra
of notes, both natural and not.
I rest on a bench positioned
precisely where Twain conducted
himself as a writer, his study
watching over the city distant.
Pieces of slate from a rubble
foundation for the study
remain—still more shards
congregating under the chill.
Twain mostly wrote in heat
that demanded he open windows
to get a cross-draft blowing
across first drafts he anchored
with books and weights.
In his time, the study was
a cottage deep in the woods,
a living, vine-covered archetype
with stone steps at the end of a path
that wound past daisies, eyebrights,
brown-eyed Susans, buttercups,
and clover blossoms. Even in cold
autumn, with the earth hidden
by dead leaves and bony tree
branches beckoning like those
in cautionary tales, there remains
a fairytale hint of magic. I think I need
to hike here again when I’m not
distracted by those flat fragments
of architectonic slate and the white
noise of first impressions.
JAMES PLATH is the Colwell Professor of English at Illinois Wesleyan University. He is the author of two poetry chapbooks—Courbet, on the Rocks (White Eagle Coffee Store Press, 1994) and Everything Shapes Itself to the Sea (Finishing Line Press, 2017)—and was founding editor-publisher of the award-winning Clockwatch Review.
