How Astonishing It Is That

You Will Love Again, People Say. Give It Time. Me With Time Running Out. Day After Day Of The Everyday. What They Call Real Life, Made Of Eighth-inch Gauge. Newness Strutting Around As If It Were Significant. Irony, Neatness And Rhyme Pretending To Be Poetry. I Want To Go Back To That Time After Michiko's Death When I Cried Every Day Among The Trees. To The Real. To The Magnitude Of Pain, Of Being That Much Alive.

I'm Vain Enough To Think That I've Made A Successful Life. I've Had Everything I've Ever Wanted. You Can't Beat That.

The Woman Is Not Just A Pleasure, Nor Even A Problem. She Is A Meniscus That Allows The Absolute To Have A Shape, That Lets Him Skate However Briefly On The Mystery, Her Presence Luminous On The Ordinary And The Grand. Like The Odor At Night In Pittsburgh’s Empty Streets After Summer Rain On Maples And Sycamore.

We Must Have The Stubbornness To Accept Our Gladness In The Ruthless Furnace Of This World.

I Ask Myself What Is The Sound Of Women? What Is The Word For That Still Thing I Have Hunted Inside Them For So Long? Deep Inside The Avalanche Of Joy, The Thing Deeper In The Dark, And Deeper Still In The Bed Where We Are Lost. Deeper, Deeper Down Where A Woman's Heart Is Holding Its Breath, Where Something Very Far Away In That Body Is Becoming Something We Don't Have A Name For.