Two by Mary Szybist - She reads here in Tucson tonight at the Poetry Center!

Happy Ideas

I had the happy idea to fasten a bicycle wheel

to a kitchen stool and watch it turn.                  

—duchamp

I had the happy idea to suspend some blue globes in the air

and watch them pop.

I had the happy idea to put my little copper horse on the shelf so we could stare at each other

all evening.

I had the happy idea to create a void in myself.

Then to call it natural.

Then to call it supernatural.

I had the happy idea to wrap a blue scarf around my head and spin.

I had the happy idea that somewhere a child was being born who was nothing like Helen or

Jesus except in the sense of changing everything.

I had the happy idea that someday I would find both pleasure and punishment, that I would

know them and feel them,

and that, until I did, it would be almost as good to pretend.

I had the happy idea to call myself happy.

I had the happy idea that the dog digging a hole in the yard in the twilight had his nose deep in

mold-life.

I had the happy idea that what I do not understand is more real than what I do,

and then the happier idea to buckle myself

into two blue velvet shoes.

I had the happy idea to polish the reflecting glass and say

hello to my own blue soul. Hello, blue soul. Hello.

It was my happiest idea

 ***

In Tennessee I Found a Firefly

Flashing in the grass; the mouth of a spider clung   

          to the dark of it: the legs of the spider   

held the tucked wings close,

          held the abdomen still in the midst of calling   

with thrusts of phosphorescent light—

When I am tired of being human, I try to remember

          the two stuck together like burrs. I try to place them   

central in my mind where everything else must

          surround them, must see the burr and the barb of them.   

There is courtship, and there is hunger. I suppose

          there are grips from which even angels cannot fly.   

Even imagined ones. Luciferin, luciferase.

          When I am tired of only touching,

I have my mouth to try to tell you

          what, in your arms, is not erased.

Mary Szybist