Joy For No Reason (A Poem)

I hope everyone had safe and happy long weekends! Mine was spent lounging by the pool with John, at dinner tables with family, and watching fireworks from a beach where you can catch 5-10 shows at once if you can spin around fast enough. The older I get, the more I appreciate summer days like the ones we  had this weekend. They feel good on the joints and on the soul.

This weekend, I also came across a poem I once put away for "safe keeping" in an old box, tucked among an odd mixture of baby shoes, birthday cards, and other mementos from various stages of my life. While re-reading it, I was brought back to my senior year of college (a time I wrote about in my post Staying Tuned In). To date, it was the hardest time of my life, and also consequently when my love for poetry really took off. I've written before about the Strength of Poetry in my life, but today I offer up this poem with the hope that it can have a similar effect on someone out there. I remember unfolding it on mornings that were hard to face. I came to it for perspective in the face of pain and a simple reminder that life was good.

Joy For No Reason

I am filled with quiet
joy for no reason save
the fact that I’m alive.
The message I receive
is clear – there’s no time
to lose from loving, no
place but here to offer
kindness, no day but this
to be my true, unfettered
self and pass the flame
from heart to heart. This
is the only moment that
exists – so simple, so
exquisite, and so real.

Danna Faulds