We were encountering turbulence.
I stood on a gilded balcony,
beyond which a parade of humans marched—
vagrants, self-haters, hermits, junkies,
chumps, the defeated, the paranoid,
the penniless, and those led astray by desire—
moving backwards instead of forwards,
because this is how life can be understood.
Earth fell silent, except for the gnashing teeth
of its tormentors, and it was as if we were in some kind
of holding pattern. Shadows vanished,
but daylight seemed delayed.
Then, suddenly,
in the kitchen, coffee percolated.
A pussycat purred at my feet.
I cut open the throat of a grapefruit.
In the backyard, a groggy bat searched for home.
A sapling listed back and forth.
Out on the human highway,
summer rains came early to our small house
across from a cornfield,
and bread and education, too,
as happiness unfolded like a strange
psychedelic moth, or the oldest unplayable
instrument, made from a warrior’s skull,
our happiness a little bone flute.