Where Now: New and Selected Poems

Joy

I stayed in bed for days and watched 
a spider in the light spin 
an airy web above my head, something 

cool and loose, without the use 
of force, or weight. 

That time, I near died 

of joy. I was a child. Still alive. Relatives 
stood above me, smiling. Summer 
was my sickness. Translucent 
nurses brought me everything 
I needed, while I 

swam in and out of sun, which
unraveled its white knitting 
on the surface of the pool, and 
flew above the orchards, which 

stretched in bloom 
from my mind to the end of time—just 

above the branches, but at great speed, and 

I thought I saw a small girl running 
like a madwoman beneath the trees. 

I didn’t even need to eat! I drank the beautiful meals 
my mother made for me 

from coolness and silver spoons. My father 

sat at the edge of the bed 
and prayed for the angels’ protection. Like 

talcum powder and masculine sweat, the smell 
of wet feathers as I slept. I got better, and 

better, listening… 

But what was that sound? The clock? The toilet 

flushing? Rain on the playground? The ocean 
choking on its own waves? 

No. 

It was a dog 
lapping at a bloody tray. 

Childhood came and went in a day, and 

I woke on Sunday morning in the arms of a stranger. 
Oh, I realized then, this 

must be joy again. Despite 

the headache, the salty thirst, the shame—that 

spinning above the bed, more 
light than thread, was 
exactly, exactly, the same.