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Writer's picturexwaxinglyricalx

My Joy



 

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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