No, he's not a baby,
he's 38 and sitting on my couch
in such a way I can see
the bottoms of his feet
and their seriously black accumulation.
Despite the social situation
four of us, including his sister
and a friend of mineand without
saying anything, I rise and go prepare
a plastic dishpan of soapy water,
then return to kneel like a supplicant
before him, who continues the conversation
as if I were not there sponging off each foot,
which I hold in one hand as I scrub
with the other, feeling the heft of what
has taken him so far already. And now
I remember how Mary, sister of Lazarus,
washed the feet of Jesus and dried them
with her long hair, though mine is in fact
so non-existent at my age I must
towel Austin's dry, thinking as I do
how good fortune sometimes comes
in the form of a son's dirty feet,
which, without embarrassment, thanks
to a good excuse, I can hold once again.
-
Winter Feature 2010
-
Feature
- Poets in Person An HD video visit with Stephen Dunn in Frostburg, MD
-
Poetry
- Jonathan Aaron
- Michael Blumenthal
- Billy Collins
- Philip Dacey
- Carl Dennis
- Gregory Djanikian
- Stephen Dobyns
- Stephen Dunn
- B.H. Fairchild
- Kathleen Graber
- Jane Hirshfield
- Tony Hoagland
- Dorianne Laux
- Thomas Lux
- D. Nurkse
- Alicia Ostriker
- Lawrence Raab
- J. Allyn Rosser
- Dave Smith
- Gerald Stern
- Ellen Bryant Voigt
- C.K. Williams
- Robert Wrigley
-
Essay
- Gregory Djanikian Stephen Dunn's Compositional Strategies: Verse And Reverse
- David Rigsbee The Despoiled And Radiant Now: Ambivalence And Secrets In Stephen Dunn
-
Book Review
- David Rigsbee reviews Here and Now: Poems
by Stephen Dunn
- David Rigsbee reviews Here and Now: Poems