April 2020
Author's Note: This past October, toward Halloween, I had the opportunity to visit Tarrytown and the
"Sunnyside" home of Washington Irving. I suspect most writers have a place of creative prosperity, perhaps something
similar to Irving's piazza of which he wrote: "My own place has never been so beautiful as at present. I have made
more openings by pruning and cutting down trees, so that from the piazza, I have several charming views of the Tappan
Zee, [the Dutch for the indigenous Tappen, a 'sub-tribe' of the Lenape, and the widest section of the Hudson, a 'sea,'
thus the Tappan's sea,] and the hills beyond; all set as it were in verdant frames, and I am never tired of sitting
there in my old Voltaire chair, on a long summer morning with a book in my hand, sometimes reading, sometimes musing
on the landscape, and sometimes dozing and mixing it all up in a pleasant dream."
Irving's Piazza
On the 200th anniversary of “The Mutability of Literature”
Not much more than a columned porch really,
the Hudson framed in ivies, wisteria,
centuries of hemlocks,
but it was here he mixed reverie with reverie,
reverie with desire, until he became
the cause of every affection,
breath of former beings, dead shore birds,
dust of leaves and once their trees,
dark inhalations.
* * *
Far now from the Tappen Zee,
I missed The Grand Tour
by a century at least, and by a notable lack
of affluence. I have returned
to my home in the Sonoran Desert,
to a second-story back deck
overlooking a deep arroyo,
and centuries of saguaros,
and in the far distance
the mountain ranges of the Tortolitas,
and at night, the moon’s lost
delirium embraces the memory
of casual sylphs, enchanted poets;
Juan de la Cruz, Granada,
Respighi, the pines of Rome.
©2020 Michael Gessner
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