By Carl Phillips
The sea was one thing, once; the field another.
Either way, something got crossed, or didn’t.
Who’s to say, about happiness?
Whatever country, I mean, where inconceivable
was a word like any other lies far behind me now.
I’ve learned to spare what’s failing,
if it can keep what’s living alive still,
maybe just awhile longer.
Ghost bamboo that the birds nest in,
for example, not noticing the leaves,
color of surrender, color of poverty
as I used to imagine it when I myself was poor
but had no idea of it.
I’ve always thought gratitude’s the one correct response
to having been made, however painfully,
to see this life more up close.
The higher gods having long refused me,
let the gods deemed lesser do the best they can —
so a friend I somewhere along the way
lost hold of used to drunkenly announce,
usually just before passing out.
I think he actually believed that stuff;
he must surely, by now, be dead.
There’s a rumored humbling effect
to loss that I bear no trace of.
It’s not loss that humbles me.
What used to look like memory —
clouds for hours breaking,
gathering, then breaking up again —
lately seems instead like a dance,
one of those slower, too complicated numbers
I never had much time for.
Not knowing exactly what it’s come to is
so much different from understanding
that it’s come to nothing.
Why is it, then, each day,
they feel more the same?
Source: FB/Trixie Angeles Crus
