CanLit Poets

A Windfall Light

by Eva Tihanyi

1

High in the Cambrian Mountains
the sheep stand, statue-still
in the slate distances

As we watch them
we are solidifying already into history,
the outlines of our changing selves
layered, traceable as fossils

Of course we know nothing of this

Nor of how we will open and close
quickly as apertures,
retain everything, accommodate
whole mountains, every nuance of light
upon their peaks

2

We return home, to another continent

The camera is packed away,
the sun closeted

She sits in her red rocking chair
fueling her thoughts with gin,
shrinking down the night

I am witness to her fear
and to her love, both large
and inadmissable

She knows this,
speaks only of the dark heavens
so much smaller and safer in comparison

Yet she moves to the window, dares
to take in the moon

For months
every shape the moon holds
she holds also, in her
something embrace-shaped and miraculous,
a female universe she carries in her
like a talisman

Even after she expels the lunar magic,
it continues to light her,
feather across her shoulders
like a gossamer shawl

3

Now, years later,
as I stare from the car window
at the empty gravel rectangle
where the house once stood, the house
where we exchanged beginnings
to take with us, to grow on,
I am sad
simply, and in a way not possible at twenty;
can't help but remember
how the sun bowed down, a windfall light
among the sadly splendid ruins,
while two women, in the sun
that is young once only, were young too
for a first and final time

Questions & Answers

What inspired "A Windfall Light"?

I took a six-week trip to England, Scotland,and Wales (with a side trip to Paris) with my University of Windsor roommate the summer I turned 21. Then, many years later,while revisiting Windsor, I saw that the house we had rented as students had been torn down. There was only a vacant lot. The poem is, among other things, a reflection on youth and the passing of time.

What poetic techniques did you use in "A Windfall Light"?

Imagery, alliteration, metaphor, simile, allusion. (The words in italics are from Dylan Thomas's "Fern Hill" which was--and is--one of my favourite poems.)

More poems by Eva Tihanyi:

• Autobiography
• Blind Man
• Breakthrough

"A Windfall Light" originally appeared in Canadian Literature #146: Women / the City / the Wilderness (Autumn 1995)

MLA: Tihanyi, Eva. CanLit Poets: "A Windfall Light" by Eva Tihanyi. canlit.ca. Canadian Literature, 8 Mar. 2009. Web. 10 Sept. 2010.