these tiresome paper dreams, honey
it's like the taste of the name you have come to call home.
Just when it has seemed I couldn't bear
one more friend
waking with a tumor, one more maniac
with a perfect reason, often a sweetness
has come
and changed nothing in the world
except the way I stumbled through it,
for a while lost
in the ignorance of loving
someone or something, the world shrunk
to mouth-size,
hand-size, and never seeming small.
I acknowledge there is no sweetness
that doesn't leave a stain,
no sweetness that's ever sufficiently sweet ....
Often a sweetness comes
as if on loan, stays just long enough
to make sense of what it means to be alive,
then returns to its dark
source. As for me, I don't care
where it's been, or what bitter road
it's traveled
to come so far, to taste so good.
* * * *
excerpts from sweetness, stephen dunn.
photography by will luo.
(delayed again, but you've come to expect that!
it's like how people make allowances for the varying reliability of buses and trains.
thank you for patiently putting up with us & our lateness!)