Funny Strange

Funny Strange

by Jennifer Michael Hecht

We are tender and our lives are sweet

and they are already over and we are

visiting them in some kind of endless

reprieve from oblivion, we are walking

around in them and after we shatter

with love for everything we settle in.

Thou tiger on television chowing,

thou very fact of dreams, thou majestical

roof fretted with golden fire. Thou wisdom

of the inner parts. Thou tintinnabulation.

Is it not sweet to hand over the ocean's

harvest in a single wave of fish? To bounce

a vineyard of grapes from one's apron

and into the mouth of the crowd? To scoop up

bread and offer up one's armful to the throng?

Let us live as if we were still among

the living, let our days be patterned after

theirs. Is it not marvelous to be forgetful?