Easy light storms in through the window, soft

   edges of the world, smudged by mist, a squirrel's

   nest rigged high in the maple. I've got a bone

to pick with whomever is in charge. All year,

I've said, You know what's funny? and then,

   Nothing, nothing is funny. Which makes me laugh

   in an oblivion-is-coming sort of way. A friend

writes the word lover in a note and I am strangely

excited for the word lover to come back. Come back

   lover, come back to the five and dime. I could

   squeal with the idea of blissful release, oh lover,

what a word, what a world, this gray waiting. In me,

a need to nestle deep into the safe-keeping of sky.

   I am too used to nostalgia now, a sweet escape

   of age. Centuries of pleasure before us and after

us, still right now, a softness like the worn fabric of a nightshirt

and what I do not say is, I trust the world to come back.

   Return like a word, long forgotten and maligned

   for all its gross tenderness, a joke told in a sun beam,

the world walking in, ready to be ravaged, open for business.