of days and there aren’t other kinds.

I’m patting the chair beside me
for a friend dissolving in smoke.
I keep a handful of ash
by my bedside because
of these that are sacred
and need carrying.

“Is this event small enough”
I was reading the beatitudes and the pets
raced, a handful of air under their
legs, and you know the joy you get
that’s not a distance from others
but a gathering, and you get it in your
feet from dirt and grass and the stray
wrapper of an ice cream, it’s a tumult
of misery lightened by possibility
and even if sleepless, you forgive the crankiness
and coldness of a stranger, and nestle
in your heart, the one you were sure
had exploded in a distant universe.

Samn Stockwell has been widely published, and her two books, Theater of Animals and Recital, won the National Poetry Series and the Editor’s Prize at Elixir, respectively. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Gargoyle, Plume, Smartish Pace and others.