Joy (noun) –
1. Getting another job at the ostensibly “Wonder”Book store,
deeply inhaling the sweet, heavy air
of piles of precious tomes.

2. Coming home
from a long day of both jobs with:
two books, one new – Márquez’s ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ –
the other half-finished; a six-pack of pleasant enough
beer; beard, scarf, hat, and a sense
of purpose.

3. Coming home
to the prospect of a lovely wife
and an over-excited pup;
a cozy evening spent in a room previously neglected;
pajamas, warmth, planets
suspended in space.

4. The feeling that perhaps,
through some luckful twist of the great Wheel…
perhaps things are looking up