The Happy Majority

Before I join the happy majority (though I doubt one member happy
or unhappy) I have some plans: to discover several new species
of beetle; to jump from a 100-foot platform
into a pile — big enough
to break my fall — of multicolored lingerie;
to build a little heater
(oh not to join the happy ones
until some tasks are done)
beside each tulip bulb to speed its bloom;
to read 42,007 books (list available
on request); to learn to read and/or write
Chinese, CAT scans, Sanskrit, petroglyphs,
and English; to catch a bigot
(oh not to join the happy ones
until some tasks are done)
by the toe; to kiss
the clavicle of (name available
on request); to pay my respects, again,
at the grave of John Keats; to abrogate
my position in God’s nihilistic
(oh not to join the happy ones
until some tasks are done)
dream; to hold my mother’s hand as she leaves this world;
to lay my hand upon my father’s heart as he does likewise;
and for my daughter to be glad I was her father as I exit, also
(in a hundred years or so), from the conscious to the un-.

— REPRINTED FROM p. 41, God Particles (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008)
WITH THE AUTHOR’S PERMISSION