Hard not to wake at least somewhat cheerful
when you can listen to Angela Hewitt playing Couperin
in the morning and the dogwood's blooming
and you have a lover--not a perfect one,
mind you, but it's hardly a world meant
for perfection anyway--and, yes, back pain
of course, high cholesterol, very little socked away
for retirement, but so what? Aphrodisia will
always find its little nooks and crannies, flesh
grows timid and begins to sag with gravity's
insistence, and there are creams, now, for
everything and, for the truly vain, surgery.
For others, like the beautiful actress killed
just this week in a freak skiing accident, there's
simply a haphazard life expectancy, not something
we will know about definitively until it happens,
and then, wherever it finds us, must celebrate
as well. From the missionary position, all
may be sweetness and light for awhile, but
then, all such nonsense aside, the conviviality
of the everyday eventually triumphs, no matter
what happens to AIG and Lehman. Birds
are all asong in the fir outside, a mass of
foreclosures puckers forth from all sides.
Brethren of the mid-range, be with me tonight--
dreams will come again, the good and the bad
of them, and the short sale of the afterlife
will surely garner less than the balance owed,
but leave us free and clear to progress with
the future. Grief, whenever it touches us,
should do so lightly, as should joy. Look
out the window: trees and sky, birdsong and
the wild graffiti of the everyday, just this life
and the next one--all out there for the asking,
much like the garbage, waiting to be taken away.
By Michael Blumenthal