“Narcissus,” by Jay Deshpand

Honestly, I’m not exactly sure what Jay Deshpande means in his poem, “Narcissus” (found in Iterant 10), when he’s explaining to the reader, “that field goes moon / and winsome.” Something about a field under the moon, something so calm, appealing. Like maybe an investigation into desire as impulse, and the nature of that impulse, and the feeling when that impulse leads you to pursuit. And with Deshpande, the desire has modest beginnings. I like modesty, because I like thinking about how many different ways a calm desire might be initiated. A desire for the beloved. An ache. And in Deshpande’s poem, it’s “that field goes moon / and winsome every time my / eyes turn to its grasses.” Such a friendly invitation. Not even as sharp as that Robert Duncan moment in The Opening of the Field but still knowing about the effect of a calming pastoral field and stationing the reader beside it. And, for Deshpande, it inspires him to list-making. Or, more precisely, to be “mired in list- / making.” What would go on a list like that? Something imaginative. Youthful. That’s how Deshpande is desiring. Where there’s a “sweetness of light upon her.” The poem has that feeling like when you say “low-key,” but even as you say it to yourself, maybe to center your desiring outlook, your low-key is swelling to something more. Something “all // of us who wake / on the same road / slurring our songs” might experience!