What Sadness Anywhere Is Sadness
—for Melissa
What sadness anywhere is sadness where
I could just stand and walk to you from sadness
Go home to you though I bring home my sadness
What sadness there though I have felt sad there
Before when I come home from far away
What sadness then or from three blocks uptown
My office where I write this poem down
In a room full of the dimness that fills spac-
es anywhere where you are not a film
Obscuring every surface but it is a light
Not shining ever from surfaces
You are not near what sadness where you might
By being near reveal each thing for what it is
What sadness where each thing is whole
Copyright © 2020 by Shane McCrae. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 28, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.
“For a long time I’ve been trying to write a sonnet sequence for Melissa, my wife. But most of them have been and seemed too labored. This sonnet, however, I wrote quickly and happily while sitting in my office, thinking not of how I wanted to write a bunch of sonnets for Melissa, but only of Melissa.”
—Shane McCrae
Shane McCrae
Shane McCrae is the author of eight poetry collections, including Cain Named the Animal (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022).