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, …
