when everyone is healthy and no one is mad by Scott Ferry

and the sounds of the light-breasted morningbirds
and swift dipping crows create a place to rest
i watch my child try to unscrew the sprinker
apparatus from the hose again and all settles
under these low flying mists and the cars labor
out on the highway and nothing is wanting
for now
 
i am scared of contentment because i know
how it tears like a ricesack and begins vomiting
each white worry into my kitchen i know how
the fates like it i know god sees me grinning
at the placid clear whiteboard i know there
will be unanswerable equations scrawled in bodily
fluids by lunch i know to half enjoy this
 
it doesn’t pay to take a photo the only thing
which sticks is grasping my son and holding him
and sniffing his damp face and wishing him
this painlessness this ease and wishing it for me
and my daughter my wife and to try to capture
the smell of his running the smell of fearlessness
mixed with dying grass just watered
 
try to keep august 1st sunday morning through
thanksgiving try to bargain with change and virus
and calamity try to meet god in the garden
and sing her asleep with guarded whistling
faithless songs with a half grin and a child’s slobber
on my cheek with these few breaths where the
morning can breathe itself into a time lapse
 
where pain will not be pain where illness will not
persist where death of any kind will not take
i hope god you can agree to keep sleeping
through the fall you can narrate your dreams
to me when you wake i hope there will be foxes
and wet marsupials and beaked storybirds i hope
the clock will be stopped by the pale moon
 
i hope we will still be alive and you can dream
us into myths like a vacation in apple-feathers
like a rashless chest like a clear long rain
like a dish of faceless fruit like an ocean of
numb ankles like a howl of fishflesh
like a laugh of a child when you hold him
and hold him and finally let him fly

 

Scott Ferry helps our Veterans heal as a RN. He has recent work in the American Journal of Poetry, Misfit, and Spillway. His second book, Mr. Rogers kills fruit flies, is available from Main St. Rag. You can find more of his work @ ferrypoetry.com.