Not all my poems are dark.
This one also takes place in Tucson.
It's in two parts.
Actually, just one of the parts is in Tucson.
Coming in for a landing, here.
Some of the people in this poem, I guess, are back.
The title has a word in it that also might need
a little bit of explanation.
The title is "Space, Light, and a Blue Cyclorama."
A cyclorama is the cloth that's usually in the back of a stage
to represent blue sky.
"Space, Light and a Blue Cyclorama."
One.
"The cosmos answers an owl in a fig tree.
Once I was loved by a woman who, while canoodling amiss,
acted as if I had the only heart who mattered.
And I believed it, but I sat around crying anyway.
I would receive love letters from her
as if nothing had happened.
Maybe nothing had.
The life you might have lived, which you still remember,
is composed of the soft metaphysical murmurs
of the world.
You wander through the desert on a quest
for a ring of white petals on the head of a stranger.
There it is, a saguaro in bloom.
The difference between poetry and prose
is that today is clanging along very slowly,
very fast, while the official tableau
is outside of time, hushed."
Two.
"Love is asleep.
My darling dreams that I lose my mind in a restaurant's powder
room.
When we leave after the meal, it's still light.
I take the wheel because she's on the phone.
She's on the phone when she realizes
I've driven off the road.
Then perpendicularly, to correct the mistake.
I manage a U-turn and set the car by the opposite side.
By now she's red-faced.
Also, I exited the restroom with my hair soaking wet,
but she hasn't had a chance to ask about that.
Tenderness has a million questions it can't answer."