Easter doodles

I have been busy with company and am traveling now, but hope to be able to catch up with the poem a day before the end of the month.  In the meantime, the puppies want to say hello!

It is also Poem in your Pocket day.  I'm embarrassed to say I'm not dressed yet...  I may have used this one last year, so I'll check later.  But it's handy and I'm in a hotel, so it's going to have to do for now.




Waking

by Stephen Dobyns

Waking, I look at you sleeping beside me.

It is early and the baby in her crib

has begun her conversation with the gods

that direct her, cooing and making small hoots.

Watching you, I see how your face bears the signs

of our time together—for each objective

description, there is the romantic; for each

scientific fact, there's the subjective truth—

this line was caused by days at a microscope,

this from when you thought I no longer loved you.

Last night a friend called to say that he intends

to move out; so simple, he and his wife splitting

like a cell into two separate creatures.

What would happen if we divided ourselves?

As two colors blend on a white pad, so we

have become a third color; or better,

as a wire bites into the tree it surrounds,

so we have grown together. Can you believe

how frightening I find this, to know I have

no life except with you? It's almost enough

to make me destroy it just to protest it.

Always we seemed perched on the brink of chaos.

But today there's just sunlight and the baby's

chatter, her wonder at the way light dances

on the wall. How lucky to be ignorant,

to greet joy without a trace of suspicion,

to take that first step without worrying what

comes trailing after, as night trails after day,

or winter summer, or confusion where all

seemed clear and each moment was its own reward.