The aspen shimmers in the breeze,
while in the space above its reach
are birds who cross the sky with ease,
and they are dancing, each to each.

 

What secrets or what mysteries

do they know that they do not teach?

What silence, what infinities?

No logic eager to impeach

 

will touch their being in its flight.

Each leaf, each bird is a delight –

and really, that should be enough

 

to send us back to second grade,

to life lived right, to light and shade.

Be simple, though it may be tough.

​​

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Fliss: Greetings, John, and well met! How are things with you?

 

John: Greetings and well met, Fliss! Rita and I are very well. We are in Boston at present, a town I’ve known since the early 1980s, so it’s familiar turf. It is raining this evening, the rain forecast all day.

 

F: I hope all is well in Boston, John; yes, it must be very familiar turf to you, having known it for over forty years! And how lovely, the rain. It’s still largely dry here in Gloucestershire, though a few showers are forecast this week. Where does this poem take place, please? Somewhere in the States, maybe?​

​​​​​

J: Yes, this is very likely an American poem, though we’ve been traveling so much it’s become hard to say! The quaking aspen is a characteristic North American tree, with its white trunk and golden leaves in Autumn. All is indeed well in Boston, at least at our end. The rain was welcome! I wish you well with next week’s showers.

​​​

F: Thanks, John! I think we know of the aspen. So, we are most likely somewhere in America in this poem. And are we in a particular MS?

​​

J: Ah! Well, this poem has yet to find its way into a manuscript; it is sitting in Work in Progress at present. It will likely go into a general collection, since it is not specific as to place.

​​​​

F: Well, that sounds like a plan, John, and all at WM wish you well with a general collection. It might not surprise you to learn that we’re interested in the dancing birds too! But perhaps they’re also a little mysterious, in keeping with the call to simplicity in the final line?

​

J: Yes, the dancing birds are indeed a little mysterious, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were a flock of starlings. Thanks for the well wishes!

​

F: You’re welcome, John! We’re fond of starlings here. In the poem they almost represent as symbols; some might wish to delve into their meaning, I think, and give some thought to those mysteries you mention too. But the poem is about the simple enjoyment of viewing the aspen and the birds. Was there anything that inspired this approach at the time of writing, or that occurs to you now?​

​

J: Hmm. I remember a conversation with a friend to whom I said how I valued things being exactly themselves, which he found funny. I like the isness of all that exists, everything in nature is 100 percent itself. And that is the case for aspen and starlings, though poetry tends to shift from thing into meaning or metaphor.​

​

F: I like the word ’isness’, John, and how it’s encouraged in the poem. As you know, I enjoy observing the natural world, without the need for more than human experience. Let’s take a look at the meter now! So, this is a Petrarchan sonnet in tet form?

​

J: Yes, you are quite correct, this is a tetrameter Petrarchan sonnet. I’m glad you enjoyed isness! I think we share a taste for the isness of reality. The last line is a reworking of my favorite Einstein remark, “Keep things as simple as possible but not simpler.” I quote that a lot.

​

F: Thanks, John; that’s great to know!

​

J: Woo-hoo!

​​

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John Claiborne Isbell is a writer and now-retired professor currently on a short stay in Boston with his wife Margarita and due to return to Paris by the end of this summer. Their son Aibek lives in California with his wife Stephanie. John’s first book of poetry was Allegro (2018); he also publishes literary criticism, for instance An Outline of Romanticism in the West (2022) and Women Writers in the Romantic Age (April 2025), both available free online. John spent 35 years playing Ultimate Frisbee and finds it difficult not to dive for catches any more!

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