Evening Star

I'm ready to become a floweret
Or a fat fly, but never, to forget.
And I'll turn down eternity unless
The melancholy and the tenderness
Of mortal life; the passion and the pain;
The claret taillight of that dwindling plane
Off Hesperus; your gesture of dismay
On running out of cigarettes; the way
You smile at dogs; the trail of silver slime
Snails leave or flagstones; this good ink, this rhyme,
This index card, this slender rubber band
Which always forms, when dropped, an ampersand,
Are found in Heaven by the newlydead
Stored in its strongholds through the years.

-Excerpted from Canto Three in Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire

Why I love this poem:

For some reason these lines from Pale Fire have always stayed with me. Perhaps because they are so easy to imagine. So many times I have looked up at the evening sky and thought about the claret taillight of a dwindling plane off Hesperus. This image in particular is a sad one. It's one of being left behind. Of watching something set off in the distance with only the trail visible. This poem has also taken on a new life for me ever since I started a family of my own. In the poem, the narrator and his wife have lost a child. Life is now always many things at once. It can never just be happy or miserable. It's the tenderness in smiling at dogs and also the melancholy of the newly dead. Having a child has taught me how precious and fragile we all are; how behind every great joy there is the fear that this could all end. Although, we get through the day thinking we can control most things, we know deep down there are things we can not control. Your child who you love so profoundly makes you vulnerable to these dangers. You want to control the world for their sake, but you know you can not.