yellow blue

He raises his hand palm down and applies it like a cap visor
to his forehead, shading his eyes from the yellow sun-glow.
“Sky blue and cloud gray are easier to look at,” he says.
Next morning, the dreams we recount are difficult, scary.
“The happy dreams, happy stories are uninteresting,” he says.
He says we are a species obsessed with the dark side:
the blues in the night, vampires, traffic accidents, shootings,
terrorism, abuse— these fill our media and awareness.
It is much easier to write about these than about happiness.
We are experts about what we want to avoid, and we know little
about what we want to attain. We should spend more time
and media space discovering an appreciation of the dimensions,
nuances of happiness; our artists should aspire to expressing that.
We all raise their hands palm down and squint under them at the sun.