To the Editor:

The rain had stopped but the skies were still grey. I had been on automatic since waking. Coffee. Shower. Dress for work. Out the door. My senses dulled by the routine of a workday morning. Or, as Shelley, in his essay, “On Life,” put it: “The mist of familiarity obscures us from the wonder of our being.” But then the morning took a turn. On my way back to my car, I walked through Dohm Alley. I looked up at the “living hand” of John Keats and my eye followed the trajectory of his pen dripping water upwards into a fountain. I paused to look at each of the poets mounted in their mossy frames on the alley wall. And for a little while on an otherwise far from supernal morning, I felt a soft breeze from Parnassus. I hope this town, wealthy as it is, finds a way to make Dohm Alley a permanent respite from the traffic and the tourism. Traffic and tourism dull the senses, but a brief transit through Dohm Alley revives them.

Patricia Donahue

Hamilton Avenue