Three Happinesses: Part Two

You’ll get no happy ending, and neither will I.

Bad drivers, bad haircuts, bad milk,

our lopsided loves, blown chances,

being too much and not enough.

All the hurts of age (my knees) (your hands),

the suicides of friends.

Whatever ever after you will get

is not one happiness, monolithic,

but many small ones:

a baby learning to laugh.

Bread baked by your mother,

and later, her recipe,

a sacrament.

A sudden mouthful

of kisses in the elevator,

or one tender kiss in the morning

as you’re shaking off a dream,

one that turns into your husband’s eyes,

soft with love in a rough face.

A friend’s voice.

Music.

This.

Timekeeping

Your focus is absolute.

Your sticky fingers cup each apricot, giving it a gentle turn

to find the blush of ripeness. You have not seen the thundercloud

that’s slumping overhead, grumbling with the weight of rain.

The bird calls halt into an urgent stillness. In that hush

the pears become pendulums, the flagpole a sundial,

and Time slides by between canal-banks.

I barely keep from leaping in to gather up the water to my body,

to pile it and hoard it, anything  to hold on to your babyhood,

which has left you while I wasn’t looking, swiftly as the apricots

that ripen overnight.     

Already my memory fails me.

 I know that when I’m older it will wash away

and leave me clutching only silt and this:

a photograph of you at nearly four

running through an orchard in the rain.