YES - John Field

Yes ...

I love the word and hear its long struggle with no

even in the bird’s throat and the budging crocus.

------Brendan Kennelly 

Say yes and the incomprehensible 

Is rendered simple, fabulous.

It may not be the place

but it’s whatever it takes

to straighten out the hairpin curves

in the twisty road that leads us there.

It’s a patch of sunlight on the lawn 

the antlered trees let through, 

afternoons soft and warm

and a night just before dawn

when  you’re wandering around the edge 

of town searching for a place to hang out 

because you’re caught between lovers

or jobs or novels or religions

and there it is: the neon glow 

of a sign in the window 

of Ned’s Chophouse, Bar and Grill: 

WE NEVER CLOSE. 

Whereas NO is a stone word 

famous for the possibilities

it pulverizes. One we can’t play

at making glamorous, like war

and the casket-rattlers 

who make patriotic speeches. 

It’s a life locked in the static

between radio stations,

a three course dinner the size of a dime

we paid a hundred dollars for,

and the blue-streak chatter 

of an hysterical woman  

who alternatively fingers 

the bruise on the back of her neck 

and her broken nose. In front of a cinema

it’s a line that never moves 

and at funerals a Chaucerian fart.

We have all of us thought 

what it would feel like

to discover the fountain of youth,

but the only agelessness is YES.

***