Merle Bachman
The Opposite of Vanishing
$7.00
41 pages
2000

descants on happiness



happiness, brief disturbance
fluttered paper tangent to a gathered warmth; the new sounds of
     birds, a.m.
and p.m.; like water remembering to surface, pool inside the
     cracks

   a vacant light touches
   equally a tin roof, distended maple, car window, blonde hair

this is how it begins
in strips peeled away

               *

striving to be happy
"it's all I want," he said
   --where nested? in texture of trees
  smoke rising from raked leaves
faint color g r e e n entering
vocabulary of earth


     "a marriage in our heads is
     not enough" but what exists inside our minds is real

as glossy starlings in a naked bush
as the sun's return: gradual tide inching up a bench

on the shore of the world it breaks
& we are broken