The First Sadness

Like a bare bulb swinging
from the ceiling
or a leaf gliding through the equinox,
I am not the first.

Mozart’s clarinet pulls one thread
from the throat: melancholy
greeting the first season.

Away from home, I circle streets.
Each turn flips a switch
as if rooms of myself are being lit.
I drive until exhaustion builds

a house where I can live,
where the sun, each day,
shows its dumb face
like a sheriff carrying out the law.

The delight is repetition:
Wolfgang is here
rummaging through the wreck;

and the soft hair you stroke
tangles in more primitive hands.