The Problem with Joy

It’s not negotiable. It flits through cedar, smacking
plate glass, leaving a small gray blotch. Winter, early dark

—no glittery snow to pretty things broken,
and lost. Yes, the sky mourns; it rained. She didn’t

so much want to die as stop. Raising her hood,
she walked down the drive for the mail, no intimate

garage door slot, a rural delivery box—the boots’
crunch on gravel like a dog’s percussive bark

or two oaks rubbing shoulders daily, or waves
scrubbing minuscule whorled shells and quartz

to sand, or the peeling of a bandage, …