Sweetness

Just when it has seemed I couldn’t bear 
one more friend waking with a tumour, 
one more maniac 

with a perfect reason, often a sweetness
has come 
and changed nothing in the world

except the way I stumbled through it, 
for a while lost
in the ignorance of loving   

someone or something, the world shrunk
to mouth-size,
hand-size, and never seeming small.   

I acknowledge there is no sweetness
that doesn’t leave a stain,
no sweetness that’s ever sufficiently sweet ....   

Tonight a friend called to say his lover
was killed in a car
he was driving. His voice was low   

and guttural, he repeated what he needed
to repeat, and I repeated
the one or two words we have for such grief   

until we were speaking only in tones.
Often a sweetness comes
as if on loan, stays just long enough   

to make sense of what it means to be alive,
then returns to its dark
source. As for me, I don’t care   

where it’s been, or what bitter road
it’s traveled
to come so far, to taste so good.

Poem by Stephen Dunn
Photo ©Natasha Lythgoe