The Worlds Beyond Our Windows in Life and Verse

So already, I love looking out of my apartment's windows. Since they're large, east-facing, and high up, I can see beyond my neighbors' rooftops to the patchwork of adjacent and farther streets, the tops of trees, the bell towers of two churches, and up into the broad expanse of unfettered sky above them all. 

 

All day long, my view bustles with human, mechanical, and natural motion. And often, I feel connected to it, even part of it, as I do what I do, such as sitting at my keyboard opposite my dining room window, as I am this afternoon, composing a blog while a stiff breeze keeps the just-leafed-out branches of my view's tallest tree vigorously bobbing and bending.

 

I also like to look out of my windows at night. Sometimes when I wake up in the wee hours, I walk into the living room, with its always-raised window shades, and take stock of what is and isn't happening outside. If night is wearing on me, I'll hope to see the first signs of dawn at the easternmost edge of my view. Always, I check on the customarily lamp-lit windows I expect to see in certain houses, and re-experience the companionship I feel with those I imagine beyond them. When there's movement--a figure walking alone, an ambulance's blinking lights--I wonder what story, routine or life-changing, is being written. 

 

Given all of this, it won't surprise you that I love poems about views from windows. Recently, I've been rereading three of my favorites: David Ferry's "Backyard Dog" from his book Ellery Street, Grace Shulman's "Gone: Washington Square, 2020," and Mary Jo Salter's "White Petals, 3 A.M." Both Shulman's and Salter's poems appear in the anthology Tree Lines: 21st Century American Poems.*

 

Today, I'm writing about Mary Jo Salter's "White Petals, 3 A.M." because in just a few weeks, the dogwoods will be in bloom in my part of the world.

 

Salter's poem first appeared in the Sewanee Review, and Project Muse provides an image of five of its six stanzas. So you're able to read the whole poem before I start talking about it, I've screen-shot that image and am providing the final four-line stanza in black:

 

one falls, the sun comes up, the green

leaves take over the length of summer,

so long you forget you live in time.

Don't blink. Don't. Not again.

 

Salter's musing is stimulated by the unworldly light of the white dogwood blossoms beyond the window and window seat at the foot of her bed. The "wide-eyed whiteness" of the "white-petaled cloud" seems familiar to Salter, who recalls a similar winter experience of whiteness. What had mystified in that earlier instance was the source of the glow of the snow-covered branches: had the snow somehow managed to capture and hold day's light? That whiteness recalled seems to have some agency: it is "wide-eyed," as if it's looking back at the speaker, participating in an interchange with her.

 

By the third stanza, the speaker assumes the presence of a moon, though there is none to be seen, and, attributes the blossoms' unearthly glow to it, metaphorically transforming the blossoms into constellations. With that comparison, the view from the window expands to fill the universe, which in turn becomes filled with blossoms and their individual petals. As readers, we're surrounded and buoyed upward.

But Salter knows what she knows about nature: moons wax and wane, and blossoms on spring trees are short-lived forerunners of leaves that will endure for a much longer season. The question "should people sleep/in April?" is poignant, since to sleep would mean to miss the breath-taking, fleeting spectacle beyond her window, this particular 3:00 A.M., this intense experience of "bounty" that lights up the brain's "circuitry." 

 

By now, this initial imaginative puzzling about the source of light in these night-time experiences of light has become a meditation on the brevity of enchanting, soul-stopping moments--the surprise of them, the gift of them, the consciousness-transforming power of them. The final stanza expresses the speaker's insight and resolve, which she conveys to us in the imperative voice so that we won't miss out on what fleeting magical moments may come our way: "Don't blink. Don't. Not again." 

The poem doesn't tell us whether the beholder of those dogwood blossoms has lain awake long before 3 A.M., or has awakened suddenly and observed the flowers first in a semi-dream state. Regardless there's something about a canopy of dogwood blossoms, a corridor of dogwood blossoms, an abundance of dogwood blossoms anywhere. Annually, I experience such an abundance when I visit a local historical house  that has an associated arboretum filled with dogwood varieties. Especially when I visit it by myself, I feel as if I've walked into the setting of a fairy tale.

There are photographs of such places and flowers. There are newsletters describing them and encouraging people to visit them. There are radio interviews that promise such places and flowers will inspire "oohs" and "ahs." But poems say and share something different and more about the experience of them. The gift of poetry is that it brings to life such moments and the insights associated with them, even for those of us who are merely reading about them. Happy National Poetry Month, and may the worlds outside of your windows make you feel humbled, connected, profoundly alive, and blessed.

* Salter, M.J. (2022). White petals, 3 a.m. In J. Barber, J. Greenbaum, F. Marchant (Ed.), Tree lines: 21st century American poems (p. 110). Grayson Books.