One Habitable Bloom

I thought that I preferred the dark –
but now we’ve got the light, I like it!

Where does this facility for sun
come from? – this sense – defense against
those vestiges of anxious childhood
which send their tendrils creeping up and in,
extend to render everything

into the strangling stratagem

it felt like then – whenever
any day was “fine.” Oh, how I would whine
inside at having to perform because
a summer morning dawned
blue, long, wide, warm:
onerously failing: flailing at a softball;
mowing down a lawn; pretending
I belonged – that I conformed

completely to some alien
and unimaginable norm: inept –
privately forlorn – until the evening crept
back to assert its softer malleable form –
its welcome cover –
and I could retreat to it: become
again its secret lover. But now,
July supplies its gorgeous

rousing bright surprise – a ripeness
well before the ripeness of demise:
and sometimes I cannot believe my eyes –
or head or heart – that I can feel, at last,
a part of it. New York allows,
of course, the art of it prodigious room.
Being here, all seasons of the year
comprise one habitable bloom.

.