The Life After

The sense of ease,
you know the one where it feels like you are sitting
in a plush chair
and all lined up with the stars,
telling the world's greatest jokes,
and when they ask,
where'd you get that one,
you say,
it just popped into my head

exists, unfortunately,
either in the mind or
by surprise. It is morning. You are thinking
about the way the furniture and the music
will arrange your evening guests
and weave together
their sentences, their silences.
It will never happen,
this kind of knee
slapping.

Then you are actually snapping off
the ends of beans with your daughter.
You wake from the joytrack
like waking from a dream
you can't recover
no matter how hard you
dive back under covers.

Or is that fortunate, fortune itself,
the way we're primed to unmake our stumbled upon
happiness with others?