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

Credit

Copyright © 2020 by Shane McCrae. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 28, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.

About this Poem

“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