Laughter Matters

and he did that a lot,
with chuckles to touch the edge
of reality, keep sanity in place,
and wolves at bay,
even when he sensed
the supreme ice-cream stand
had been emptied, then abandoned;
even then–
and when the hungry maggots chewed
each still green apple,
but not when the city fenced
off the blackberries–
then his eyes changed from Nordic
to glacier blue
as thoughts recalled
the way it had been in his youth
with stretching space
for legs to roam to explore,
with no granite stones
or thin-skinny houses
to block good views,
and clean air to suck deeply into
lungs, fish swimming lazily in the
lake, gravenstein apples to take
away the hollow ache when times
were lean and tough.
no stones to imagine then,
pale pink and paler gray,
sharp-cornered and bald
sparkling in the sunlight caught
within the framework
of a darkened alley
few want to imagine, talk about,
and certainly refuse to name

–Joyce Metzger