REFUGE

Awake late.  Daylight draped 
over the bed in a lazy expanse
of orange time. Through the doorway
the day spreads out in loping waves,
like an empty body of summer water, 
aquamarine.  No obligations 
but feeding the dogs.  Later, 
a little time in the garden. 

When your husband gets home, 
you eat, wash dishes, and sometimes 
while talking, often in passing, 
you catch hands, the small assurance
I'm here, I'm here.  Happiness feeling 
light and simple as yellow balloons. 
Why sometimes does it seem so hard 
to get to this, to live in this:  the shine 
of air in contented houses?