Everyone should be born into this world happy
and loving everything.
But in truth it rarely works that way.
For myself, I have spent my life clamoring toward it.
Halleluiah, anyway I’m not where I started!

And have you too been trudging like that, sometimes
almost forgetting how wondrous the world is
and how miraculously kind some people can be?
And have you too decided that probably nothing important
is ever easy?
Not, say, for the first sixty years.

Halleluiah, I’m sixty now, and even a little more,
and some days I feel I have wings.

To awaken with her, this dream
to begin days, days full and ripe
whose mornings already pour gold
just like this one, this, on which I dream,
and say to the gold in my window,
I finally understand you, when she lies by me
when I hold her, her breath
when my hands are once more sure
of what they must curve to hold,
to hold her form in the mornings, early,
when the days bear her soft name,
this gold reaches its goal.
I’d like to dream, dream for years,
study the alchemy of morning light,
and on those days that are fully ours,
not to awaken empty-handed.

Darling

The days fall out of your pockets one after the other.
Soon you’ll need a new jacket with tougher leather

and seams no one has felt. Soon you’ll bring
the old books into your bed and sleep easy

and alone. It must be December again.
This must be the part of the story where you

refuse to say how the bodies you’ve walked toward
continue walking in you. With heavy black boots

in a calm procession of darling and honey—
they walk up and down the narrow streets of your heart.

in the city out here, i’m drowning in my weird
from trying to stay real
head floating, body going under
head sailing, but i’m going under

the women sell plums, the men sell chocolates
buy one or the other or both
but watch your buying, some are rotten already
money is precious and rot spreads too easy

up at the crossroads, i’m selling my face
but no one’s buying—who needs a face
i pocket my face, put on a blank
too late for faces, i put on a blank

last night dark as asphalt, my headlight blew out
now i finally know where i’m going
looking for kinky, he’s changed his address
still the same place, but he’s changed his address

living out my afraid, i’m dying in my alive
i must learn to sing out of key
feels strange at first, but i’ll soon be alright
soon’s i learn this song, i’ll be alright