From the Archives

A message just popped up on Substack suggesting I consider re-posting something from a few years ago, when there were less subscribers then there are now and I thought that was a good idea. So, here’s something from May 17, 2024.

Happiness

When I was (as they say) in my cups
I thought happiness, too was a drug.
When it wore off, you got more of it.
Twenty-four years later & I thank God
for the rationale happiness: the steady,
consistent, lucid, funny kind of happiness
that lets you into the light world
of the nameless, which must have always
been there wondering where I was.

Andrew is happy like that: light, consistent.
And he dances whenever there isn’t any music
signalling a time to give a speech
with his whole body because maybe I hadn’t
been listening to him living.

Listen to me: I’m dancing.

Except for some days at around 4:00
in the afternoon—some Saturday, Sunday,
another winter in the living room
& the light is coming from the middle
of a movie, or we’re watching the movie
about our cats in their consistent happiness.

And the birds have less of wherever
their singing comes from—measurably
colder—when the hiss of Inwood radiator heat—
that 4:00 in the afternoon sleepy-heat
starts its medicated blanket out
from the window into the rest of the apartment
that I see it happen: Andrew darkens
from something—

something, I keep telling him (but to myself)
in my absolutely unprofessional way
that harkens back to the meaning of an hour
from the past. It could be the hour just before
his father comes home drunk & all bets are off
that Andrew first darkened. And darkens now
in the persistent tail of having to hear
his father call him through the years
every name there is, except the name
Andrew already is: steady, consistent. A dancer.

Listen to me:

Andrew didn’t exactly teach me how to be happy,
but he showed me why it is so.