Courting Joy

∴

Joy must be courted.

Shy, elusive, hesitant,

she shrinks from brash grasping.

The desperate and the howling miss her timid whispers.

Joy cannot be commanded or held fast.

She slips into the quiet space

opened for her by breath

and surrender.

Joy must be wooed

with  no expectation of relief or transformation.

She comes in small ways

and in small acts;

a moment of forgetting,

lost time in the act of creation,

a companion’s purr.

And though our instinct is to clutch at her

to keep from drowning,

we must let go,

and allow her to hold us

in her own way.

∴