Joy

Comes softly

like drops pattering on a beach,

or breeze in an abandoned tree

that you will love as you tend it

and fertilize its roots and birth,

loose children to inhabit its branches

and run in its grass

giving it song once again.

Joy

is the first-soft-clapping of the hundreds,

then thousands, of hands whose rhythm and praise

mark the entry of your boat, storm-tossed,

to harbor, where it rests, untouched by waves,

healed by gentle winds

and the pure waters

always.

Joy

is children on a pleasant winter day,

friends talking,

an old beech smiling with new leaves;

all the rainbow colors,

and the fallow grass that you know

will glisten life again:

the promise of spring.