I never guessed it would be like this

Imagine a poem that starts with a couple 

Looking into a valley, seeing their house, the lawn 

Out back with its wooden chairs, its shady patches of green, 

Its wooden fence, and beyond the fence the rippled silver sheen 

Of the local pond, its far side a tangle of sumac, crimson 

In the fading light. Now imagine somebody reading the poem 

And thinking, "I never guessed it would be like this," 

Then slipping it into the back of a book while the oblivious 

Couple, feeling nothing is lost, not even the white 

Streak of a flicker's tail that catches their eye, nor the slight 

Toss of leaves in the wind, shift their gaze to the wooden dome 

Of a nearby hill where the violet spread of dusk begins. 

But the reader, out for a stroll in the autumn night, with all 

The imprisoned sounds of nature dying around him, forgets 

Not only the poem, but where he is, and thinks instead 

Of a bleak Venetian mirror that hangs in a hall 

By a curving stair, and how the stars in the sky's black glass 

Sink down and the sea heaves them ashore like foam. 

So much is adrift in the ever-opening rooms of elsewhere, 

He cannot remember whose house it was, or when he was there. 

Now imagine he sits years later under a lamp 

And pulls a book from the shelf; the poem drops 

To his lap. The couple are crossing a field 

On their way home, still feeling that nothing is lost, 

That they will continue to live harm-free, sealed 

In the twilight's amber weather. But how will the reader know, 

Especially now that he puts the poem, without looking, 

Back in the book, the book where the poet stares at the sky 

And says to a blank page, "Where, where in Heaven am I?"

listen to it here

[Mark Strand {1934-2014} 'Reading in Place', from The Best of the Best American Poetry, 1988-1997]