|
Sunny Disposition
Her name rhymes with serene
and she talks about the weather every time you meet: as if it’s personal, as if the days are her children, or yours, and there are good grounds to be concerned after all the care, all the trouble you’ve taken
and now this:
ailing, pale skies that drag themselves around like teenagers who won’t eat nor speak civilly, who sleep at all the wrong times then glower and slump, locked in the bleak mirror-chambers of their own cloudy heads...
but wouldn’t you know it:
just when you thought you’d be lumbered with surly and sullen ‘whatever’ forever,
here comes a whole tribe of days
that pull you up short with their casual artfulness, everything at which they suddenly excel:
bare-chested men peacocking at cricket;
women in frocks the wind could lick off quick as foam; kids who monkey from bikes to play-gym; or the breeze, a little drunk, just grown brave enough to lift wisps of hair from your neck’s warm skin, while sunlight swings from everything it touches like finches sipping upside down from the kowhai’s honeyed teats...
so when she says, ‘Beautiful day, isn’t it? Paradise!’
can’t you almost believe you’ve earned it, and that we’ll all – all of us – be all right, now we’ve had this glimpse of where the old dream thinks we’ll get to, in the end?
|