Today's poem is by Lewis Meyers

Happiness
       

On the coffin-sized back porch
high above the ground
where anyone worth his salt
pursued his heart's desire,
I didn't know what to do
and asked my mother that.
I was seven. It was August,
the Capital's glandular month;
it came in with morning glories
between its teeth, or darting eyes.
We were in a natural sweat.
My health took the heat off,
but not Baudelaire's boredom
which I wasn't aware I had.
Mother couldn't allay it,
but I thought it must be happiness,
the word on everyone's lips
just before the end of the world.
And I stood on the screened porch,
looking in on the kitchen
while mother made lunch
and Tosca played on the radio,
bored to tears of happiness,
or happily sweating with boredom.

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Copyright © 2024 Lewis Meyers All rights reserved
from Five Points
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission