NOT ART YET... III...

RISING

The sun sits out of sight,
Below the hilltop still,
The clouds above it glowing egg-yolk yellow,
All electric dazzle,
Last night's sunset born again.
And roused from sleep to see,
In what he smiling called my "jammies,"
Feet bare on chilly boards,
I blink and gaze
In happy recognition.

A hug too brief
(Do I remember right?
Was there a hug at all?)
And he is gone.
I slide between the sheets again,
Expecting nothing more than warmth
And find the undertow.
And sleep.
I wake surprised that I had slept
And see him there now
Balanced on one foot
And stripping down with practised ease,
Slipping in again,
His arms so close about me,
And myself so close to bliss...

When did I last allow myself
To go to sleep again,
Sleep late, sleep deep,
And follow drifting tides of dream...?
But that is only half the tale:
It's his permission
Makes the drifting sweet,
And crowns the morning's glory.
Such tenderness,
So light a touch, so far.
So near now and then:

Ah! Farewell to sleep.



Yes.
I know.

There ought to be some kind of limit on the number of changes you can ring on the one subject, the number of posts you can wring out of less than twenty-four hours. But here's the thing:

I got a phone call from my daughter the other night; we hadn't talked in a while, and it was like a week at the sea-shore. To reconnect, to be able to talk about the people we care about [including her mother], to nudge her in the direction she would really like to go... all of it was, to quote a recent posting, "bliss." The following day I woke up halfway through the day [my boss was out of town and I had spent the morning hammering out the "Not Yet Art" items] and realized that I was

HAPPY.

There were those three days after Christmas where I thought my heart would fly right out of my chest, but I crashed after they came to an end, only to pick up the pieces on New Year's Eve. This felt different. And aside from those two or three days, it seems that life had stretched out in a pretty bleak expanse for months and months and months. And now I wander around telling people not that I'm "OK," or "as well as may be expected under the circumstances," but "GREAT."

There's no particular reason, well, one particular reason, the oldest reason in the world, the reason that world keeps going 'round.

Who knows how long this will last, can last?
The new me says: Who cares?
As long as it does last, I am happy to be here.
.