I crave joy. In music. In Spanish. In time.

I smell it in sunlight. Hear it in leaves.

It speaks the running of dogs, is the widening embrace

of the universe. A child in a high chair

splashes her tumped over milk and giggles.

A river sings itself all the way to the sea.

A cow rolls a beach ball across a field, because

because because of fun. Things we can't live without:

tubas, wind chimes, volcanoes. A bit of moonlight

in our coffee. Cells that have the energy of fire.

A net to land in when we fall from the high wire

of our befuddlements. The belief that we are

or will be free. At some point in the future,

it'll be a wound to intelligence, a scar on our faith

in the value of consciousness, that some people

don't think a particular woman is qualified

to be President of the United States, among

other reasons, due to her laugh, her big round laugh

full of sass and brass. In a country founded

on the pursuit of happiness, they object

to delight, as if jubilation and politics

don't mix. They probably object to other things,

such as wombs and breasts in the Oval Office,

but they're asking voters to believe she's disqualified

from the gig due to an expression of happiness

rooted in and rising from her belly,

where all true laughs are born. I crave

decency, a public space where I can look into

the mirror of a billion faces, or one, and want to be

on good terms with life. And I'd go to the bar

with that laugh any night of the week, or dig a ditch

beside it, or go to war with it and ask, What

the hell are we doing here? Let's go to Amsterdam

and ride bikes instead. I'd lend that laugh

a waterfall or a cup of sugar or a white paper

on foreign relations, and will vote for that laugh

and the woman who offers it without hesitation,

in the dignity of being who she really is

in front of us, along with us, as if to say,

Here is the meal you've been craving, dig in.

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