joy

In my weekly commute to Burlington, some mornings I hit traffic, and some mornings I don’t. Today, waiting in a long line, I listened to Garrison Keillor read poetry.

“Despair” by Billy Collins

So much gloom and doubt in our poetry—
flowers wilting on the table,
the self regarding itself in a watery mirror….

Today, with the sun blazing in the trees,
my thoughts turn to the great
tenth-century celebrator of experience,

Wa-Hoo, whose delight in the smallest things
could hardly be restrained…..

Sitting alone in my little Toyota, I laughed out loud.

It’s the fragrant apple blossom season in Vermont. Dandelions are rampantly blooming. My teenager daughter texts me at work of her misery, the stark unfairness of the world. Of course, I text back, but go for a run. The ten-year-old skips on our evening walk. I’m just so happy, and I don’t know why.

How many decades has it taken me to relearn what I knew when I was ten? And to laugh about it? The black flies are out and biting fiercely, but the sparrows are singing mightily.

My ten-year-old came downstairs the other morning dressed in shorts although it was only 39 degrees. No. I immediately said. But it might warm up, she insisted.

In this afternoon’s rain, the kids have headed down the road to the neighbors’ trampoline because it’s fun in the rain, apparently, even in a cold May rain.

These Vermont kids, like the unfurling leaves in my apple trees, are vigorously unstoppable with their own flowing sap. At ten and eleven, the world is as new to them as this magnificently unfolding spring. Lacking rigid expectations, why not leap in the rain? – Although I did notice the girls had the foresight to pull on extra pairs of socks.

The artist, and particularly the poet, is always an anarchist in the best sense of the word. He must heed only the call that arises within him from three strong voices: the voice of death, with all its foreboding, the voice of love, and the voice of art.

– Federico Garcia Lorca

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