Life Is Poetry (Now)

When you find your spot and hit your stride,
regardless of how hard you tried to be
on time and didn’t quite succeed, yet neatly,
gracefully, and perfectly in step,
slipped into your appointed place as if
you were the missing tuba player in
a marching band, but landed with a grin
and saucy bow, finessing now,
extemporaneously starring in
an unpremeditated bit, and everyone
applauded, just assuming it was part
and parcel of the entertainment — then
you’ve made a work of art out of a chance
anomaly, and life is elevated
from the ordinary: It’s a symphony,
a dance, a comedy… perchance, by grace,
beyond felicity, to be accompanied
by ginger tea and love and handmade lace
and wondering at Coleridge and Blake…. Now
you must get some pixie dust (before
you are allowed a bit of rest and solitude)
to give you extra effervescence and
a bit of magic, and, not merely reading
sonnets of Rossetti, Keats, and Sidney,
be a sonnet, one with careful, offhand
rhyme, magnificent. Be poetry;
its tide is in, its time may not soon be
so sensible again.

⧫

For more on this poem, see Poem E: God's Time Is the Best Time

If I Could Make You Laugh

Irises, by Bud Cassiday

If I could make you laugh, I would ask

little more of life today. Spontaneous delight—

oh, what a gift! I’d take a snicker or a giggle—

they’d suffice, but I’d keep trying for a show of

joy arising from your toes, alighting on your face

like butterflies and brightening your eyes.

What more of grace do I require; what else

is on the list that I present the planet with,

most of the time, but oxygen

and locomotion,

and a poached egg, buttered toast,

a cup of minestrone, coffee, and some

water from the tap, no ice—just that.

If I could make you laugh,

no diamonds, rubies, semiprecious stones;

exotic travels or expensive clothes

(which I confess a weakness for);

no shoes beyond the necessary two

(one foot apiece);

no country cottage on an acre with a

modest space for growing lettuce,

pumpkins, cucumbers, tomatoes, and

a few perennials—a show of crocuses in March

and daffodils in April, irises in May, with

buds of roses spilling through the fence and

promising lush flowers and sweet scents in June,

and daisies, bachelor’s buttons, and

chrysanthemums I could look forward to;

no chauffeur,

no masseuse;

for none of this would I exchange

a single second’s levity with you. If I were

Leno, then perhaps I’d have

a better chance, but as it is, a modicum of

silliness and whimsicality

must do, if I'm to
make you laugh.

Somewhere there are twenty angels

dancing on a blade of grass. I’ll seek them

out and ask them to come with me when I

tap upon your window in the evening. Inasmuch

as angels understand the secrets

of the universe, I needn’t say,

nor will they ask me why,

my highest happiness

would be

to laugh with you today.

--Mary Campbell

May 7, 2016