Floating on a great river of sadness.
Through a gorge. Bright sun.
Not consolation or desolation
but something else. The way I was
in high school when every morning
I woke up joyous and just did things
and everything was easy but now
the joy is so thinned out and sheer
it’s more like detachment.
The philodendron snips I keep
putting in little vases with nothing
but water and somehow they keep
growing. They are all over the house.
I think about them. I keep track of
them every day. And the fog
in the morning and how it slowly burns
off. Leaves. Stars. Sometimes
the unexamined life is worth living.