A favorite room—-at the Gasparilla Inn, Boca Grande, Fla. Paul Goldfinger photo. ©

Hi Paul:

Greetings from Manhattan. It is surprising how far you can travel, just by sitting quietly at home in a favorite room, surrounded by familiar objects. Here is the poem, “A Room in New York,” from my 2008 collection, Father of Water.

Best wishes,
Charles Pierre

A Room in New York

As I sit at my desk, the morning sun begins
to fill this room with slow-moving planes
and angles of light. They glitter my windows
with Atlantic waters and whiten the shades
with New England snow, brightening
my blue sofa to a field of wild asters
in Nova Scotia, and my varnished table
to a forest of yellow pines in the Carolinas.
Rays skim the spines of a thousand books,
where peaks of an Alpine mountain range
shimmer on my shelves. When beams reach
my oriental rugs, the colors of Central Asia
shine up at me. As I write, city and wilderness
move in unison with the sun’s slow passage
through this room: each flame-suffused image,
each act of attention to the way light works,
leading outward to a world beyond walls.

Max Raabe and Das Palast Orchestra

Live at Carnegie Hall 2007