Joy

Linda said Jack said
I lived my life with everything in it. Not somebody else's life.

and: I like the feeling of being inside myself.

I always forget the line from the Mark Doty poem about watching the dolphin
Is it joy
or grief
he mistakes for something slight.

She's crying, won't take bottle
he said.

I left the reading during Megan O'Roarke
(who we liked despite ourselves)

and rushed home, not stopping for food.
wrote a poem on the way home
about leaving the poetry reading
to go breastfeed. She was asleep when

I walked in, peaceful on the couch.

You sit across from me with your screen
and me here on mine
between us, she is talking like crazy
singing almost, something wildly important.

You asked me to write about joy
maybe because of her, or my sadness the other day
about how love fails. Or because it sounds like Jo,

I don't know if I'm always living my life.
But it catches me from time to time.

I pick her up so we are eye level and her eyes fill with it
as she reaches out to touch my mouth.

the red haired woman we both knew twenty years ago.