Before Joy

Before joy, the moments that could be
     but are clearly not yet joy. The pause,
         the windless plain; then, curtain
after curtain saying not this one yet,
     perhaps the next. You might as well
         slow down and learn all this other
rhetoric of passing for. The orator,
     speaker, teacher, master, pulls 
         a line of knotted squares 
from out of the liquid air; look how 
     they ripple, peach and lime-green, 
         burnished gold. You love most 
the moment before or the moment 
     after because it is how you know 
         something bloomed briefly there.