WE SHOULD GIVE THANKS

Now, after love, you and I relearn

the fundamental landscape, a naïve

painting that is nothing more

than it appears – railroad, pine grove, water tank,

the irrelevance of literature. Soon

the proper aesthetic distance will

assert itself and we’ll describe

those shivers and moans. Meanwhile

let us gaze out the window at the October

sunset, and the end of another

luminous day. We should give thanks

for small favors: here comes that old

engine driver, the moon, hauling her cargo

of stars across the vast prairie of sky.