Arlene Corwin writes

When Joy Leaves

When joy leaves, what steps in?

Nature doesn’t love a vacuum -

Almost never leaves a vacuum.

When joy leaves

Rampant listlessness of mind takes over*

And a person by the name of Nover

Is observer.

Paucity so strange and foreign

Doesn’t doesn’t really want that thing - that joyless thing

To put the mind, spine, neck to swing

(As in the concept ‘noose’’).

When shorn or torn from mind-set,

Sleeplessness replacing it,

The active peace hard to get back

Unless one has provided self

With some kind of a silent frame

With any kind of name, (but lame) for comfort -

Times when happiness has left its home inside your heart,

It’s but to wait it out,

To find again the peaceful state

With gentle and unsentimental will

To stillness.

 

*rempant listlessness; an oxymoron