At least in retrospect. For even sorrow

Seems bearable when studied at a distance,

And if we speak of private suffering,

The pain becomes part of a well-turned tale

Describing someone else who shares our name.

Still, thinking of you, I sometimes play a game.

What if we had walked a different path one day,

Would some small incident have nudged us elsewhere

The way a pebble tossed into a brook

Might change the course a hundred miles downstream?

The trick is making memory a blessing,

To learn by loss subtraction of desire,

Of wanting nothing more than what has been,

To know the past forever lost, yet seeing

Behind the wall a garden still in blossom.

BEING HAPPY

Of course it was doomed. I know that now,

but it ended so quickly, and I was young.

I hardly remember that summer in Seattle—

except for her. The city seems just a rainy backdrop.

From the moment I first saw her at the office

I was hooked. I started visiting her floor.

I couldn’t work unless I caught a glimpse of her.

Once we exchanged glances, but we never spoke.

Then at a party we found ourselves alone.

We started kissing and ended up in bed.

We talked all night. She claimed she had liked me

secretly for months. I wonder now if that was true.

Two weeks later her father had a heart attack.

While she was in Chicago, they shut down our division.

I was never one for writing letters.

On the phone we had less to say each time.

And that was it—just those two breathless weeks,

then years of mild regret and intermittent speculation.

Being happy is mostly like that. You don’t see it up close.

You recognize it later from the ache of memory.

And you can’t recapture it. You only get to choose

whether to remember or forget, whether to feel remorse

or nothing at all. Maybe it wasn’t really love.

But who can tell when nothing deeper ever came along?

THE PRESENT

The present that you gave me months ago

is still unopened by our bed,

sealed in its rich blue paper and bright bow.

I’ve even left the card unread

and kept the ribbon knotted tight.

Why needlessly unfold and bring to light

the elegant contrivances that hide

the costly secret waiting still inside?

THE LUNATIC, THE LOVER, AND THE POET

The tales we tell are either false or true,

But neither purpose is the point. We weave

The fabric of our own existence out of words,

And the right story tells us who we are.

Perhaps it is the words that summon us.

The tale is often wiser than the teller.

There is no naked truth but what we wear.

So let me bring this story to our bed.

The world, I say, depends upon a spell

Spoken each night by lovers unaware

Of their own sorcery. In innocence