Gale
By William Ward Butler
Boo, do you remember
that song about how
having a good life
makes for bad stories
and having good stories
makes for a bad life?
I didn’t think it was true,
but once we had good stories
our lives were worse—
we had to suffer, so we did,
the gods cannot bear the happiness
of mortals wrote Gore Vidal
when his life-long lover died,
although he called him a companion—
a word so vague it could mean anything.
Forgive me,
there was a time
when all I wanted
was for something
interesting to happen to us.
William Ward Butler is the poet laureate of Los Gatos, California. He is the author of the poetry chapbook Life History from Ghost City Press. He has received support from the Community of Writers and the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference. He is a poetry reader for TriQuarterly and the co-editor-in-chief of Frozen Sea: frozensea.org