Beauty and happiness come! Unexpectedly
in the single seconds that make up our days.
They come as two mourning doves umbrellaing
together under the branches of the lacy, tea-green
fern just outside the rain-flecked window.
They come as the Japanese Beetle, its metallic-blue
and green head, its copper-colored back and tan
wings, almost hidden in the rose bush confiscated
from our mother’s garden. They come in the sun’s
slant in mid-afternoon. In a deceased sister’s succulents
surviving the winter’s hard freeze. In baby’s breath.
They come to one awaiting a bone marrow transplant,
to his spouse of forty-nine years packing for the one
hundred days away from home in the city of steel
and strangers. They come to the refugee fleeing
her birth country, a brimming paper bag and walking
cane her only possessions.
Published: Verse-Virtual, 2023; photo from Unsplash
