When I look beyond myself,
my physical self, my self-tracked atoms
my bagged, wet flesh and my well-worn bones,
I see all directions and find my joy.
My joy in Freddie Mercury,
in his voice of frayed spun stars
arching out across the Wembley Stadium
splintering into indelible motes, his burning core
forever in theirs, in mine.
I hear everything; I am the vibrating air
inside the tiny drum, simply a space
made real by my place, a void meant only
for filling for a time.
My joy in Leonard Cohen's deepening sigh,
The endless well of a warm embrace,
I follow the light through the crack in everything
to see him sing of his golden voice, to grin with the crowd rising
around him in a wave of peak humanity.
I am the holding tight and the letting go,
The palm on palm, the eternal grace
after communion. I am beyond joy,
cleansed, released, renewed.
My joy in the first bars of Inner City Blues,
tintinnabular pulse, hands-on-skin breath,
in which all folk are gathered in grey light,
in soft rain, in silhouettes that frame their love
curling like smoke from singed hearts everywhere.
I play the words like the black and white keys
music rippling and running
tunes I here but cannot recall,
played and gone.
My joy in first and final words,
At the eastern edge of Steinbeck's Eden,
In the slain waxwing at the cusp of Pale Fire,
In Remembering Babylon, when we finally approach
knowledge, prayer and one another.
I cannot separate joy from bliss,
joy from a deep state of grace,
from fleeting moments of pure contentment,
of lived and remembered gifts of glory.
My joy in the soul of William Blake
in his vision of light shared with Thomas Butts,
in the wildflower, in the grain of sand,
in the gambolling on the echoing green,
the little black boy's mother and her tragic, perfected love.
I dream in the soul of my grandmother,
she never lets me go,
The purest sense of being loved
the embrace that gifts impossible pride.
My joy in my children is absolute.
It fills me to bursting point,
twinned with terror and hurtling time,
their touch, their eyes, their laughter,
Their joy is best of me.
I see the river from my window,
the unseen wind animates the leaves
above the boy walking down the hill
with a bag upon his back.
My joy is my wife, my unbound self,
her clasped hand in the dark of night,
in curves that beckon in the soft sunlight,
in eyes that locked with mine when we met
the moment my heart threw away the key.
I find joy because I seek it,
the blessings rained down on me –
I pick them up, one by one,
stepping round the shit,
straining the blood, the tears
for the hidden ones, until
they circle me like planetary rings
making me nothing
but a strung line of eternity
until I am gone.
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