I Wish We Could be Happy for a While

"What has to decline, declines; what 
belongs to us, stays with us..."
~ Rainer Maria Rilke


What is bliss     a bird 
like a high-pitched 
                    typewriter 
repeats 
        and repeats in the tree

I bury
my arms in 
           a profusion of weeds

each one with the same
smell of atomic green

I think I still
have 
     desire 
or what you might call
perhaps     a quickening

Now I can 
watch it press 
               and subside
press   and subside

without yielding at once

Or I lose
my place in the song
                     and stumble 

I am a history
of small   planes 
revving 
        toward the edge
of an airport field

                    then stopping short
before a mountain gorge

Yellow flares 
              appear
in the darkness
                signaling return—
 
Someone waving flags
curling in the shapes of fortune
teller fish