"Twilight Comes" by Hayden Carruth

"At the Edge of Dusk" by Catherine Hyde

After Wang Wei

Twilight comes to the little farm

At winter's end. The snowbanks

High as the eaves, which melted

And became pitted during the day,

Are freezing again, and crunch

Under the dog's foot. The mountains

From their place behind our shoulders

Lean close a moment, as if for a

Final inspection, but with kindness,

A benediction as the darkness

Falls. It is my fiftieth year. Stars

Come out, one by one with a softer

Brightness, like the first flowers

Of spring. I hear the brook stirring,

Trying its music beneath the ice.

I hear - almost, I am not certain -

Remote tinklings; perhaps sheepbells

On the green side of a juniper hill

Or wineglasses on a summer night.

But no. My wife is at her work,

There behind yellow windows. Supper

Will be soon. I crunch the icy snow

And tilt my head to study the last

Silvery light of the western sky

In the pine boughs. I smile. Then

I smile again, just because I can.

I am not an old man. Not yet.

"Twilight Comes" by Hayden Carruth, from Collected Shorter Poems 1946-1991. © Copper Canyon Press, 1992. 

"Forty-Five" by Hayden Carruth

Spotted Salamander    Ambystoma  maculatum

When I was forty-five I lay for hours
beside a pool, the green hazy
springtime water, and watched
the salamanders coupling, how they drifted lazily,
their little hands floating before them,
aimlessly in and out of the shadows, fifteen
or twenty of them, and suddenly two
would dart together and clasp
one another belly to belly
the way we do, tender and vigorous, and then
would let go and drift away
at peace, lazily,
in the green pool that was their world
and for awhile was mine.

"Forty-Five" by Hayden Carruth from Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey. © Copper Canyon Press, 1966.