You can’t force joy,

though the fucking hyacinths

floating on the damn spring breeze

sure make a go of it;

if only

we can meet them where they bloom.

I pretended your hand held mine

swinging little arcs over sidewalks

music of rivers and buses

keeping time with our steps –

the sun winked like in a cartoon

and it was spring

it was all the dimensions

it was nice.

More than a trickle

more like a glubbing sobbing human

woman watching a bunch of birds

in rain while the hills turn super-green

and she whispers something like

“I’m barely getting through the days”

but the sound is lost to wind

and the carousers down the street

remark about the early forsythia

and wonder when’s dinner

while the woman counts

between contractions

that aren’t actually happening

but like the hills like the birds

like the long blue Sundays,

everything is getting wet.

There’s as much comfort lately

in a cold rock in a wintering field

as there is inside my blanket fort;

nowhere’s safe from the awful thoughts.

.

The most frightening of all

is the numbness that rises

within my tainted daydreams

like smog over a culm bank,

all smudged and faintly disturbing.