extremophile

So my brother is getting married and he wanted me to read something in the ceremony. I couldn’t find anything that I liked, so I tried to write my own, not expecting anything to come of it. Turns out that my bother liked what I wrote and wants me to read it. But I want to see if I can improve it. I’m no poet; haven’t written a poem since college. So I need input. I thought of posting it here to see if anyone who might read it would have some…constructive criticism. So tell me what you think…but be gentle…I do have to read this in one form or another… I’m locked in. Are there too many cliches here? Does it go on too long? Are some of the images contradictory? Is the underlying logic unclear?

You Said, It’s Okay to be Happy

Happiness: that inhabited silence,
that radiance glancing outwards
near the edge of a shadow, touching
upon the consciousness of others,
alienating complexity .

Some don’t prefer it.

That penumbral space,
into which language does not enter,
since nothing one says, explains.
A beach upon which you see,
but don’t hear, the crashing of waves.
Hear instead sound folded into patterns:
a representation—the most beautiful—
of what you behold.

A proposition of harmony, fleetingly experienced—
Some don’t trust it.

Harmony, they say, is a marriage;
Mixed elements don’t always agree;
have no stable connection.
We must return to a world of contrast:
to the pleasures of complexity,
irony,
rock and roll,
Impermanence.

But it’s ok to be happy, you said.
Count the times it has happened;
count many times, on your fingers;
count that eclipse or partial eclipse;
count that time when you felt,
not your body, but your heart
kind of brimming as though magnetized
A rushing tide.

Or that time you looked through the window,
as the trees batted against each other in the wind,
and heard music.
Or that time, remember? on the bus?
speeding through the lush New England summer,
when there seemed to be an order.
And when, there was also that:

The feeling of the hand of your beloved,
with whom you had just fought,
resting lightly upon your leg.