Joy

The lights hovered across the hillside as dusk ebbed,

Slowly blinking off and on in gentle andantino dances.

We whisked empty jelly jars trying to cage fireflies

That eluded us with ease in the cool, Appalachian

Summer air, misty with sweet allysum and wisteria.

A dislocated nostalgia for I knew not what, bruised

My heart, and the music of the day I was exposed to,

Banal and fabulous-Beethoven, Gershwin and the Starland

Vocal band-saturated my head, soundtrack to all I was

Seeing, feeling above all and under something so much

Greater, tip of the iceberg, endless canopy of darkness

As the boat goes over the falls and dumps you between

The galleon and the fortress in the Disneyworld ride,

The stillness of the air standing the hair on your neck.

Trying to locate the exact moment I felt my spirit lift

Into happiness untouched by creation is impossible,

I’d recognize it just as it was fading away: in the synth

Polyphony of Yes’ “Roundabout,” verses on mountains

Coming out of the sky, ten true summers and being

There; in the music at the end of a Peter Sellers movie,

As Chance the Gardener steps onto the pond, a President

Eulogizes a businessman’s funeral, and a meandering

Improv based on a Satie tune seems inevitable; in the

Sci-Fi coloring books with frames from “I, Robot,”

“The Island of Dr. Moreau,” and “Stranger in a Strange

Land,” the wide loops and arcing lines of those images,

Cool sparks of joy leading to an unknown God St. Paul

Made known to the Athenians in the Book of Acts, Who my

God-Mother Therese gave me small, glossy, paperback

Picture books about, that stoked my longing for purity,

Goodness, and righteousness, drawing me ever closer

To an all-loving, perfect Author and Finisher of my faith.

~Poem originally published in "A Time Of Singing" Journal