All Joys Are Small

by Sharon Corcoran

Yes, our wedding was an eruption of joy,
never to be repeated. But I’m talking
the daily visitations, like a flock
of finches that appears as I emerge,
that circles above the house and me
three times, exactly three, before
heading east and promptly vanishing
against the peaks. The joys
so small they barely register—
the sight of clouds lenticular
advancing over mountains,
a perk of our geography. Coyote choirs.
A cottonwood bedecked with blackbirds,
all with Puerto Rico on their minds.
A spontaneous hug from the one
I’ve been cooped up with every day.
These many joys rain down as grace,
connecting mine to all lives,
mycelia groping through the wet
and giving ground.

From The Two Worlds: Poems.
Middle Creek Publishing and Audio, 2021.

Read this and other poems by Sharon Corcoran in The Two Worlds, available for purchase online.

The Benedictine monk, Brother David Steindl-Rast, has famously said: “Joy is the happiness that doesn’t depend on what happens.” In other words, the surface happiness of having things go our way, or finding all our desires fulfilled, can never match the sustained power of a truer, deeper joy. Yet we often forget that the smaller joys we cultivate each day remain more sustainable over a lifetime, and that joy is available even as we struggle through a difficult time, even as our world reckons with tragedy and war. I love how Sharon Corcoran describes these “daily visitations,” the moments of joy “so small they barely register,” unless we prioritize them. Like other qualities we might give our attention to—gratitude, kindness, and mindfulness, for instance—perhaps we can also make joy a regular practice, knowing that it doesn’t make us self-centered to receive the grace that rains down from such seemingly ordinary pleasures. We often feel a sense of greater kinship with others in times of sorrow, but if we could also see how those smaller bursts of joy—“a flock of finches, coyote choirs, or a spontaneous hug”—all draw us closer together, too, like the “mycelia” of fungi underground, connecting us one to the other in countless unseen ways.

Invitation for Writing & Reflection: What are some of the small joys, the “daily visitations,” which you often barely notice? See if you can make a list as specific and true to your own life and experience as this poem.

ABOUT THE POET: Sharon Corcoran

Sharon Corcoran lives in southern Colorado.  She translated (from French) the writings of North African explorer Isabelle Eberhardt in the works In the Shadow of Islam and Prisoner of Dunes published by Peter Owen Ltd., London.  Her poems have appeared in Braided Way, Canary, The Buddhist Poetry Review, One Art, Sisyphus, Literary North, and Bearings Online among other journals.  She is the author of two books of poetry, Inventory (2018, KDP) and The Two Worlds (2021, Middle Creek Publishing).

POETRY SELECTION AND COMMENTARY BY JAMES CREWS

James Crews is the author of four collections of poetry: The Book of What Stays, Telling My Father, Bluebird, and Every Waking Moment. He is also the editor of two anthologies: Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, The Sun, and have been reprinted in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry and featured on Tracy K. Smith’s podcast, The Slowdown. James teaches at SUNY-Albany and lives with his husband in Vermont.

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