Candle under Glass

1.  The Question

I drove home tonight
             (by myself, from a picnic,
              up to our house in the foothills)

full of joy
             (singing in the car,
              the mountains the muted purple
              of Sonoran dusk, the cd a gift
              from someone who knows
              I am happy)
mostly, generally, reliably.

What can it possibly mean
that I am happy
when the person I love
has no capacity for happiness?


2.  The Kind of Argument

I want to talk about the guitars.
You want to talk about the children.
Fuck it.

Our impasse. 


3.  The Kind of Trouble

I would like to go to bed with someone
who is glad to be alive.


4.  Safety Clasp

So far, I only imagine this with people who are married well,
not going anywhere.  Who maybe, because they’re honest,
notice a little heat, a little mutual noticing, but—

no threat.  Both sides alive to each other,
sated, really, just by that.

But what I imagine:  begins
with an admittedly fatherly embrace,

from which hungrily, I—

No.  Frequently what I imagine proceeds directly from

hungrily, I—


5.  The Candle Under Glass Appears and Disappears

It is not true
that you would always rather be dead.

I know my list won’t help you—
my list of your attachments, proof by travelogue,
or proof by belly laugh,
by any set of thrill citations:  no one really remembers awe (for example)—
it’s not retrievable;
in memory, it’s always fogged, for all of us.

But I am telling you:
you would not always rather be dead.
Wrap that in whatever faith is left in you.
The world will enter you again.
You will unfold beneath the stars and see the sky.
(You’ll be with me.)