Evening wind................

Evening Wind    Edward Hopper     1921

is the title of one of Edward Hopper's
pen-and-ink drawings,
which I spent some time looking at
in a gallery on the far west side of town.

Hopper could have called it

Totally Naked Women Crawling

on All Fours into an Unmade Bed

for she does occupy the foreground fully,

so it was only later that I noticed

the curtains behind her being lifted

by what must be an evening wind.

Then I noticed that the woman appears

to be looking at those curtains,

her face hidden by the dark curtain of her hair.

Or is she looking through the curtains

at the jagged outline of the city buildings,

topped with water tanks in silhouette?

It was not until I closed my eyes and imagined

her gradually falling asleep

after sliding naked under the covers

that I could envision the evening wind,

not just the wind as revealed by the curtains,

but the invisible wind itself blowing

through the room of this ingeniously titled drawing.

-Billy Collins, as published in Whale Day And Other Poems