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.
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