luculent

there’s a scene in Ethan Frome —
you’ve probably read it,
everyone reads it —
where they take the sled down the hill
in the moonlight
and the author gives you their laughter
like it costs her nothing,
like joy is just a thing
she had lying around.

I’ve been trying to tell you
what it’s like
when I think of you
and that’s the closest
I’ve managed.

borrowed.
a dead woman’s winter.
somebody else’s hill.

which should embarrass me more than it does.

but here, now —
on this slope of thought…this mid-afternoon daydream

the snow is doing that thing
where it holds the light
longer than makes sense,
and there are two people on a sled
going faster than is wise,
and they are wailing,
actually wailing,
with the kind of joy
that doesn’t know yet
what it’s about to do.

that’s it.
that’s the whole poem
I was trying to write you.

Edith Wharton wrote it better
in 1911
and I’ve just been
carrying it around
ever since I first read it,
waiting for someone
to deserve it.