Laura Kasischke
September 2002

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 nearly 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 time--just
above the branches, but at great speed,

and thought I saw a small girl running
like a mad woman 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 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 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.

From Dance and Disappear, University of Massachusetts, 2002.