In the house of E. J. Evans’ collection, First Snow Coming, “there are rooms filled with books / in which we read each other .” Always in these poems we feel the palpable presence of time, impermanence, a quiet sense of loss underneath the beautiful world we inhabit.

WEST WINDOW 

Down in the heart it is always autumn. 
Always the row of pines 
with their branches churning the wind, 
and gusts full of leaves swirling past. 
The clouds thinning out and the sky steel blue. 
The light pouring down again across the lawn. 
Late afternoons I watch it thicken and deepen. 
You live there on the other hill. 
When we are together 
the long conversation continues.