Counterweight

When a nameless joy rises
in me - an iridescent bubble,
a mouthful of laughter - the cause
is rarely something rare,
but rather, commonplace: 

    spring peepers chiming from the marsh
        the smell of fresh-cut lemons
             river stones through sunlit water
                  my young son's knobby wrist

     Or nothing.

Unbidden, it wells up, buoyed by the breath
of grace.  For we could have been created
without it, the capacity for joy. But our maker
saw fit to work it into our very clay -
wild and precious, our counterweight to despair.

- Kathy Kramer