For Joy

I love you old friend
with your bag of 
deflated balloons
and stale cake
and in your back pocket
coins for tossing around
at parties

Here you come jingling
and jangling 
all fancy
and Renaissance-y
speaking rapidly about
the last Faire you attended
in some beach town where
no one blinked at such garb
You make me want 
to go there and see for myself

I love this dancing you sweep before you
I thought there was a doom ahead
but maybe in your lovely universe
no such thing can happen

You don’t even carry a sword
and the plague mask I expected
to see you wearing now
you proclaim
is inauthentic
and you will not be party
to such things

and I want to believe you
because joy is perhaps
a mistake but
in your hands perhaps not

You inflate a few balloons
and make a few animals
and toss a few coins

and when
I ask about the cake 
you say one should always carry something sweet
for as long as it retains its essence

and to argue with that
seems to diminish more than just
the thought of such a possibility

and this is not the place
or the time
for that