Joy

It arrives on a spectrum the size of a DJ’s speakers

colors tilting off our scale of vision and splashing

up against a brilliant elsewhere. Don’t try

to figure it out. Step in too close and I want

to run away and be lonely forever. Who knows

how it came to be like this. Did you see the meteor

showers over the foothills this morning? The dove

asleep in the restaurant’s darkened window?

Sometimes the night is so warm it leaves thermal

imprints across my body, glowing like strokes

of bright plankton. I spread my arms and light

drifts out across my whole backyard. I have

only ever been held down by light.  

That’s only half true. I have my sister, a black cat

with green eyes, new friends with magical

powers. Doctors, teachers, a Russian cosmonaut

who hangs from my ceiling, talking about the life

force of the moon. Who could argue? No part

of my immediate past seems so alive

this evening now that I am standing here

on the corner by the cafe and the drugstore

as black sedans roll down the boulevard

as shiny insects drop one by one

from an oak so full of tiger colored sun beams

it must be remembering dawn.