Travel Tenderly

Travel tenderly
as you loosen your grip
on the idea of Venice in the fall
and settle
on a casual elation
near the edge of a small lake
in New Hampshire
or northern Vermont.

We all can use
that kind of turbulence
drifting past our busy minds
where we attach ourselves
to the constant movement of something
we never wanted
but suddenly found
oddly useful.

Keep the old letters?
Purge words that are meaningless.
Change the meaning of something dirty; possibly obscene,
into something sacred.  A sketching of a nude
on a cafe napkin becomes fine art.
Five words strung together in a sentence
a line of lovely verse
or the lyrics to launch
a romance.

Peepers and cardinals,
lilacs and harvesting
note after note
in singing spring.
Promising
in full-throated sound
 to be
so fully alive.