GIVE IT TO ME STRAIGHT

Give it to me straight,
no distortion please.
Give me one good reason
why I should wear rose colored glasses
fixed between me and reality,
changing the colors of perfect clouds and sky,
subduing and sterilizing the sharp green mountains
and blue blue blue green of ocean and lake.

Of course, emotions are another matter.
Be careful what you do with promises
made when the ecstasy is still smoldering.
Conditions change.
Someone else comes along with more to offer,
even if only for a year or a week
or an afternoon of what promises to be bliss
but turns all too soon into excess baggage
like old suitcases that are too good to throw away
but are never what you want or need again,
so they stay in the closet collecting dust.
It’s interesting how each seemed the right size once,
the first time you saw it,
gleaming, sparkling there in the store.
It would be the one to use forever,
the one that would replace all others.

Is there ever a bird that sings as beautifully on the tenth day
as it did that first afternoon when it perched in the jacaranda tree?
What a song that was the first time note followed note
drifting in through the window to dance across the bed.

...and that one butterfly until
it got lost among so many.