Billy Collins: Evening Wind

is the title of one of Edward Hopper’s
black-and-white etchings,
which I spent some time looking at
in a gallery on the far west side of town.

Hopper could have called it
Totally Naked Woman Crawling
Into an Unmade Bed on All Fours,
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 beyond the curtains
at a jagged outline of 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 see the evening wind,
not just the wind as revealed by the curtains,
but the invisible wind itself blowing
right through the room of this ingeniously titled drawing.