The Sunday Poet: Dianne Silvestri

Dianne Silvestri 

Dianne Silvestri is a writer and retired physician. She is author of the chapbook Necessary Sentiments. Her poems have recently appeared in Naugatuck River Review, Barrow Street, Poetry South, Zingara Poetry Review, and The Main Street Rag. A past Pushcart Nominee, she studies and performs with PoemWorks Workshop. She is Copy-Editor of the journal Dermatitis and leads the Morse Poetry Group in Natick.

The Walker

            after Wallace Stevens

One must assume a temper of fall

To mark the browning and shadows

Of crisping trees in the chill;

And have accepted an annual dwindling

To salute the pin oaks scalding ochre,

The maples flushed in the fleeting flare

Of September’s slant; and not to claim

Any pain in the musty scent of diminution,

In the scent of dry leaves,

Which is the scent of existence

Full of that same diminution

That is drifting through the same space

Of the beholder, who walks in the chill,

And, barely extant herself, kens

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.