It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.

But happiness floats.
It doesn’t need you to hold it down.
It doesn’t need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
and disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
and now live over a quarry of noise and dust
cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
it too could wake up filled with possibilities
of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
and love even the floor which needs to be swept,
the soiled linens and scratched records . . .

Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,
and in that way, be known.

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;

And I was filled with such delight

As prisoned birds must find in freedom

Winging wildly across the white

Orchards and dark green fields; on; on; and out of sight.

Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted,

And beauty came like the setting sun.

My heart was shaken with tears and horror

Drifted away ... O but every one

Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

I wandered lonely as a Cloud
   That floats on high o’er Vales and Hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
   A host of golden Daffodils;
Beside the Lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
   And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
   Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
   Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:—
A Poet could not but be gay
   In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft when on my couch I lie
   In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
   Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the Daffodils.

Say tomorrow doesn’t come.
Say the moon becomes an icy pit.
Say the sweet-gum tree is petrified.
Say the sun’s a foul black tire fire.
Say the owl’s eyes are pinpricks.
Say the raccoon’s a hot tar stain.
Say the shirt’s plastic ditch-litter.
Say the kitchen’s a cow’s corpse.
Say we never get to see it: bright
future, stuck like a bum star, never
coming close, never dazzling.
Say we never meet her. Never him.
Say we spend our last moments staring
at each other, hands knotted together,
clutching the dog, watching the sky burn.
Say, It doesn’t matter. Say, That would be
enough. Say you’d still want this: us alive,
right here, feeling lucky.

The dive starts

on the board….

                                                                    

something Steve

often said,

or Rub some dirt

in it, Princess,

when in his lesser

inscrutable mood;                         

Steve of the hair gel,

and whistle, a man

who was her

                                                          

diving coach,

who never seemed

to like her much.

Which was odd,

given, objectively,

her admirable discipline,

and natural gifts,

the years and years                                                          

of practice, and the long                                                          

row of golden

trophies she won

                                                                    

for his team. The girl

she was then,

confused, partly

feral, like the outdoor

cat you feed,

when you remember

to, but won’t allow

to come inside….

She’s thinking of Steve

now, many years

later, while swimming

naked in her wealthy

landlord’s pool. Or

“grotto,” to call it

properly, an ugly,

Italian word for

something lovely,

ringed, as it is,

with red hibiscus;                                                  

white lights

in the mimosa trees                                                                  

draping their blurry

pearls along

the water’s skin.

It’s 3 am,

which seemed

the safest time for

this experiment,

in which she’s turned

her strange and aging

body loose. Once,

a man she loved

observed, You’re

the kind of woman

who feels embarrassed

just standing in 

a room alone,

a comment, like him,

two parts ill spirited,

and one perceptive.

But this night she’s

dropped her robe,                                                            

come here to be

the kind of woman

who swims naked                                                             

without asking

for permission, risking

a stray neighbor

getting the full gander,

buoyed by saltwater;

all the tough and sag

of her softened by

this moonlight’s near-

sighted courtesy.

Look at her: how

the woman is floating,

while trying to recall

the exact last

moment of her girlhood—

where she was,

what she was doing—

when she finally

learned what she’d                                               

been taught: to hate

this fleshy sack

of boring anecdotes                                                          

and moles she’s lived

inside so long,

nemesis without                                                                           

a zipper for escape.

A pearl is the oyster’s

autobiography,

Fellini said. How  

clean and weightless

the dive returns

to the woman now;

climbing the high

metal ladder, then

launching herself,

no fear, no notion

of self-preservation,

the arc of her

trajectory pretty

as any arrow’s

in St. Sebastian’s

side. How keen                                                                              

that girl, and sleek,

tumbling more

gorgeous than two                                                            

hawks courting

in a dead drop.                                                                             

Floating, the woman

remembers this again,

how pristine she was

in pike, or tucked

tighter than a socialite, or

twisting in reverse

like a barber’s pole,

her body flying

toward its pivot,

which is, in those seconds,

the Infinite,

before each

possible outcome

tears itself away

(the woman climbing

from the water now)

like the silvery tissue

swaddling a costly

gift.

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
standing by the windows looking out
in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

Forget each slight, each head that turned

Toward something more intriguing—

Red flash of wing beyond the window,

The woman brightly chiming

About the suffering of the world. Forget

The way your best friend told the story



Of that heroic road trip, forgetting that you drove

From Tulsa to Poughkeepsie while he

Slumped dozing under headphones. Forget



The honors handed out, the lists of winners.

Forget the certificates, bright trophies you

Could have, should have, maybe won.



Remind yourself you never wanted them.

When the spotlight briefly shone on you,

You stepped back into darkness,



Let the empty stage receive the light,

The black floor suddenly less black—

Scuff-marks, dust, blue tape—the cone



Of light so perfect, slicing silently that perfect

Silent darkness, and you, hidden in that wider dark,

Your refusal a kind of gratitude at last.

Loaded on beer and whiskey, we ride 
to the dump in carloads
to turn our headlights across the wasted field, 
freeze the startled eyes of rats against mounds of rubbish.

Shot in the head, they jump only once, lie still 
like dead beer cans.
Shot in the gut or rump, they writhe and try to burrow 
into garbage, hide in old truck tires, 
rusty oil drums, cardboard boxes scattered across the mounds,
or else drag themselves on forelegs across our beams of light 
toward the darkness at the edge of the dump.

It's the light they believe kills. 
We drink and load again, let them crawl
for all they're worth into the darkness we're headed for.