Surveying me as I depart from home,
I stipulate to happiness today.
So light and clear it’s hard to make a poem
and if I die this afternoon, I say
it needn’t be more wonderful than this:
dependents well, acknowledgment at work;
by exercise and writing bathed in bliss;
eschewing meat and mania and murk.

I mark this morning and with joy remark
it bold, emphatic in the Wednesday crowds:
a scimitar of moonlight in the dark;
a jet athwart a canopy of clouds;
and knocking wood within, I send to God
a little fervent gratitude. I nod.