Morning Poem

Hearing my grandson’s voice is the all-clear sound
At the end of the air raid.
And my daughter’s voice isn't as much lament
As pale tissue paper, voile, camellia or peony.

And the love of my life isn’t a wanderer who landed
In my braids, bully a timber frame house there
Got lost in myth for a hundred days when he meant
To spend one night, dreaming of north woods

And other women, and why shouldn’t he?
And the holy man singing isn't as much a mystic
As a rock star battling forest fires with a guitar.
And Los Alamos isn’t a town from 1953 frozen

In Cold War aspic but a community of millionaires
Funded by government and God to keep the bombs
Cooked and ready to serve at the banquet called
Armageddon. Just saying that word is a badly designed

Prayer. And the rabbits are not tiny destroyers,
Grasshoppers disguised as rodents, but childhood,
Beatrix Potter and even pests can give pleasure
On a morning like this.

And my own body isn’t so much a sacred vessel
Of breath, pleasure and pain running rivers,
As it is an elephant of love. Enough now, enough then,
Enough history and even enough suddenly
Becomes full. Who could have filled enough
in the night while I was sleeping?