It comes unsought—only unsought.

It comes uninvited—only uninvited—
and by preference at the core of sorrow,
when sorrow without relief

slumps into the mind like thick,
obvious mud: the sick child,
the fallen marriage, the failing

god who hides his fragments
in debris, weeks when you learn
sorrow is the only possibility.

It comes like this. One evening
you trudge along, broken,
a street chosen because choice

doesn’t matter, watching your numb
shoes—and for no reason at all
the late-spring light lifts itself

up from the late-spring lawns,
and the two sullen teens,
glaring as you pass, move

toward each others’ hands,
and the sun through thin cloud
has just enough day left

to burn the glass
of a stone church
free of its gray blur,

so that gold and blue now flash
and yearn, and the sky
trembles, ready.