Facial Sunlight

    In every boat made of blue
    balsa sent downriver with the wind for luck
    a New Year's message.

    I'll have no truck with that.

    On the floor, stretching
    out my arms warm in sunlight, spine straight, feet splayed
    I lie like an anchor--

    it has a certain appeal, this

    being
    shamelessly accidentally happy.

    Possessing the clarity
    of the formerly blinded now
    will save me from

    becoming one
    of those things I have always wished
    never to become
         
          the skates of a weeping nun
          any leaking triple-masted slave-runner
          ditto any cheap plastic pulley
          fast or slow, the algebraic of an average pinworm's motility
          some unfair tribal migration
          a railroad-crossing in the middle of nowhere.
         
    Better take
    this, this incidental
    pleasure.

    Won't return to it, ever.



    Bio Note
      David Rivard won the 1996 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets for Wise Poison. His most recent book is Bewitched Playground (Graywolf, 2000). He teaches at Tufts University.

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     David

     Rivard