Good Afternoon

Why shouldn’t it be enough
That this brought joy to one life,

Dancing conga lines of words,
Patterned thoughts and chunks of rhymes,

Silliness, gloominess, doubt,
Dark, excessive certainties,

Declarations of all kinds?
Close to a sunny window,

Close to the start of winter,
A body could spend an hour

Or as much time as it took
To change the angle of light

From squint to glow on the wall
And down to pool on the floor,

Chanting these compositions
To itself and no one else.

You know it’s going away,
All of it—the light, this day,

The coming season, the poems,
The life, the walls, the era,

Civilization, and you.
So no one heard the poet,

Knew of the poet, or cared
To know. Sun and the words glowed.