A Poem for a Thursday #217

C. G. Hanzlicek is an American poet. He is the author of nine books of poetry. Hanzlicek spent thirty-five years teaching at California State University. He says of teaching “what could be better than spending your life in a classroom talking about necessary things.”

I'm scrambing an egg for my daughter.
"Why are you always whistling?" she asks.
"Because I am happy."
And it's true,
Though it stuns me to say it aloud;
There was a time when I wouldn't 
Have seen it as my future.
It's partly a matter
Of who is there to eat the egg:
The self fallen out of love with itself
Through the tedium of familiarity,
Or this little self,
So curious, so hungry,
Who emerged from the woman I love,
A woman who loves me in a way
I've come to think I deserve,
Now that it arrives from outside me.
Everything changes, we're told,
And now the changes are everywhere:
The house with its morning light
That fills me like a revelation,
The yard with its trees
That cast a bit more shade each summer,
The love of a woman
That both is and isn't confounding,
And the love
Of this clamor of questions at my waist.
Clamor of questions,
You clamor of answers,
Here's your egg.

Egg
C. G. Hanzlicek