Because I believe in beauty.

Five-hundred Widowers In a Field of Chamomile, John Surowiecki

The yellow, the pollen, the millions of fallen petals

pull us down to sleep; all our dreams have gravity

like the one in which we are about to drift off

in our beds with the windows closed shut

and our wives reading in cones of yellow light,

their knees up like barricades, their eyes

smiling at a clever turn of phrase.

They sip their tea in unison and the tea starts

to smell like them, honey and wool, a musky odor

stolen from a gland like a tiny octagon of wax.

We sink deeper into our beds, into the earth;

the summer smells like sleep, is sleep,

its first instant, where everything is paired

and within reach and where it ought to be.