How can you stand it—looking at things?

      For example, the geranium

out on the patio, the single pink

blossom in the sun? Or stand the sunlight

moving through it,

illuminating, holding the flower open like a high

clear note, an ecstatic

widening

which arrives, arrives. What

do you do with it? While the shrubs and the lowest

overhanging leaves

lift slightly in the wind, and the blossom

doesn’t move.  It’s the object

of affection, and this is how

it hurts you:

by holding the note open—

Past the front of the apartment, traffic goes by:

one truck, then another

comes on, disappears.  And I have

the blossom in my vision—

       sunlight, like vision,

making clear the tiniest

hidden veins.  I don’t know why

I should be here, alive

and having to see this, this bright thing

living in time

or have to see it later, at the end

of the afternoon, when the sun’s

lower, its light diagonal across the pot,

      the light then pulling away

across the mossed brick

like a wave, only slower,

slower.  The blossom is still pink,

but no longer

brilliant. I’ll go back

into the kitchen.  But you, are you stronger than I? Can you

      stay in love with it? Make promises,

marry it?  Are you so sure

of your position in the world?