Wishing you all some “Sweetness”

Happy Poem In Your Pocket Day! I had a lot of fun giving poems to my co-workers last year. Unfortunately, today was full of scrambling for interviews. I was lucky to find special poems for Deedee, TBID, and myself.

And, of course, one for you!

Read some Stephen Dunn, and you’ll see the world differently. Better, I think. This poem is called “Sweetness”:

Just when it has seemed I couldn’t bear

one more friend

waking with a tumor, one more maniac

with a perfect reason, often a sweetness

has come

and changed nothing in the world

except the way I stumbled through it,

for a while lost

in the ignorance of loving

someone or something, the world shrunk

to mouth-size,

hand-size, and never seeming small.

I acknowledge there is no sweetness

that doesn’t leave a stain,

no sweetness that’s ever sufficiently sweet …

Tonight a friend called to say his lover

was killed in a car

he was driving. His voice was low

and guttural, he repeated what he needed

to repeat, and I repeated

the one or two words we have for such grief

until we were speaking only in tones.

Often a sweetness comes

as if on loan, stays just long enough

to make sense of what it means to be alive,

then returns to its dark

source. As for me, I don’t care

where it’s been, or what bitter road

it’s traveled

to come so far, to taste so good.

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