Letter From Paradise (Jan. 14, 2005)

After a bitter cold holiday
where we groused drinking
hot tea beneath blankets
& the world outside was
foggy & chill in the two
weeks since it's been
nothing but warm,
days lightly breezy in
the low 80's, nights
in the 50's. But heaven
on earth is always
relative; the saturate
of kind weather is
pressed down hard on
our heads by the heel
of a God's hand --
a high pressure front
maintains this
infernal calm --
causing a legion of
headaches to sprout in
the day, my migraines
finding a pounding
counterpoint in the
bad sinus bangers
suffered by my wife.
In the past two weeks
we've had more than
a dozen between us.
So weave the pleasantry
of sky days with these
threads of thudding pain,
freighting each day with
a heavier step. No surf that
we can hear
this far inland but
that ever-approaching
curve and smash and
dulled recede is at work
in the ground we walk on,
the stations we work at,
the bed we sleep in.
At night as exhaustion
and the Sinus PM pills
reel us down from
the day's worn shore,
the news on TV is
mostly bad or sad
or maddening, southeast
Asia's coast a new
world of ravaged souls,
the President we did
not choose espousing
policy we despise, the
toll in Iraq daily and
grim and the resonance
of so much hard work
to support this house
grinding and feverish.
Outside the maple has
begun to bud, the
butterflies have colonized
the garden and our
cats are killing everything
they can. This morning
rain is falling off and on
in a massy blue brogue.
It's so warm at 5 a.m
I have the fan on.
I read about a huge
bronze horse a man
found in the abandoned
ancient city of his dream,
nine feet high with huge
wings and a half dozen
cupdion holding on for
dear life, none quite able
to climb aboard for a
decent ride. The ambiguous
gods have cursed us with
this blessed life my love,
for us to find a way
to make that horse a
home. Today we try again,
for better amid worse,
amid the spiculations of
hard rain and a deeper
sound below, tiding
far below the bed
we never left once
we there at long last
the other and married
every world with a kiss.