It's the things we can't expect... that bring happiness

In a comment to Siona at Nomen est Numen, Dale wrote:

It's the things we can't expect, blossoming in the spaces that are opened by loss, that bring happiness. Every great joy of my life has either blindsided me or stalked me silently & gradually infiltrated me. I've never (but once, 30 years ago) caught one that I expected with my hands. and it was only a joy because it wasn't what I thought it would be :-)

6:18:27 PM      trackback [] 

Hum

I just found this poem I wrote in November 2001 for the writing group I joined that September. It was based on a postcard of an abstract painting by Boston artist Stephen McMillan that I'd seen at the Fort Point Artists Open Studios that October. It's funny how clearly I can remember standing that bright, sunny, warm fall day with my friend Lori and her friend Bill looking out from South Station across the channel to where the studios are. I think all our nerves were so raw that fall that things like glorious sunshine would stop us in our tracks, stunned that the world could still be so beautiful. Anyway, here it is, revised slightly...

Hum

 

after “Hum,” oil painting by Stephen McMillan

 

 

1

Squares of light

slide down the taxi window

pulsing to thumping

bass line blared horn

siren receding

a red umbrella a tan raincoat

another and another

a blurt of neon a half-lit face

traffic lights street lights

blurring together into

the heart of the city.

 

2

On the street

squares of light reflected

held together in

surface tension.

Some lug-soled boot

will splash down

shatter windows steel

dreams workaday things alike

thrown apart mashed together

resettling again

on the surface

like nothing ever happened.

Who could believe it?

 

3

Hundreds of squares of light

fly up into the night sky

neon streams out messages

intercepted from cell phones

long gone: Call home…

Office workers city dwellers

glide by dry-eyed

determined keeping

the pulse of the city.

11:55:28 AM      trackback []