Sunday Morning

SUNDAY MORNING
Bright blue sky then how. Then why.
Hedonistic thrill pales in the harsh light of families on their way to church.
A childhood trip to Manhattan, holding my father’s hand, the people looking painfully alive, as if
the essence of being shone from every pore.
Am I one of them? Am I one of them? Am I? I am
holding a hand and if you cut me open I’ll bleed ice blue.
Scraping cold butter off the block naked in the kitchen.
How wonderful, to have bread and butter and salt. What a blessing this is.
And oh, how the radiator clanks and groans like a dying man. What a gift.
How grateful am I? I speak only to myself. Watch how grateful I can be. Are you watching?
He tells me “you are a child playing in a world far larger than yourself.”
I tell him I am a coiled spring. Make me bounce.
Choose to love the rain, love the sludge, love the skinny fox next to the tracks, love the wind,
even when a wine glass blows over spills red all across the tablecloth and he’s pouring me
another drink, drawing me another line, calling me another time.
Give me everything now but shake it up and put it in a whiskey sour.
Isn’t it funny how they give you both lemon and milk for your tea, as if to say,
“Don’t ask for too much. It curdles.”