to greet joy without a trace of suspicion

i want to greet joy without a trace of suspicion.

or i want to be able to appreciate the joy i have now without feeling the need to run ahead of it and clear the obstacles, like some kind of joy bodyguard, or a joy curler (yes i just used curling in a metaphor for my attitude towards joy) i want to hastily smooth the surface as it rolls forward... i am desperate to lay down my jacket for joy. for love.

or, if i cant help myself from looking ahead, then i want to at least believe that love lasts. even if it's changing, growing, deepening, darkening, weakening, wounding, scarring, grounding, ever-awakening to reality or in a constant state of complication, i just want to believe to my core that it can endure.

but not endure like a punctured animal drags on, hobbled and in pain, i want the love that made it all begin to endure - even as it takes new shape i am beginning to feel how that familiar strong structure of love can be there, always there, holding everything up like bones.

this may be the biggest challenge of personal life. not just keeping love alive but believing it is possible. thank you stephen dobyns for this tornado of a poem that sucked me in and dropped me off a few counties away.

Waking

Waking, I look at you sleeping beside me.
It is early and the baby in her crib
has begun her conversation with the gods
that direct her, cooing and making small hoots.
Watching you, I see how your face bears the signs
of our time together—for each objective
description, there is the romantic; for each
scientific fact, there's the subjective truth—
this line was caused by days at a microscope,
this from when you thought I no longer loved you.
Last night a friend called to say that he intends
to move out; so simple, he and his wife splitting
like a cell into two separate creatures.
What would happen if we divided ourselves?
As two colors blend on a white pad, so we
have become a third color; or better,
as a wire bites into the tree it surrounds,
so we have grown together. Can you believe
how frightening I find this, to know I have
no life except with you? It's almost enough
to make me destroy it just to protest it.
Always we seemed perched on the brink of chaos.
But today there's just sunlight and the baby's
chatter, her wonder at the way light dances
on the wall. How lucky to be ignorant,
to greet joy without a trace of suspicion,
to take that first step without worrying what
comes trailing after, as night trails after day,
or winter summer, or confusion where all
seemed clear and each moment was its own reward.

by Stephen Dobyns