Too Beautiful, in May

I was busy with happiness when I pulled out and hit the other car.
Thought I could let my attention fly high with the spring sun. No.
True, no one was hurt. True, the other car’s driver was kind. And true,

that winter had been grindingly long, and I was in a frenzy of joy—
had been. As I drove home all of my clan followed behind,
disapproving. All of my tribe shrugged and collectively raised

one eyebrow. That they were all dead only served to sharpen
my understanding. Of their opinions. As I drove home.

Ecstasy’s not in the public life of my people,
it would be a private matter. But didn’t they laugh?
And wasn’t there the deepest gladness in that sound . . .

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Listen

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Poems by Alice Duggan have appeared in Sleet Magazine, Water~Stone Review, Tar River Poetry, Alaska Quarterly Review, Poetry East, Nimrod, Sugar House, SAND, Poet Lore, and elsewhere; in a chapbook, A Brittle Thing; and in an anthology, Home (Holy Cow! Press). She’s interested in dailiness, in colloquial speech, the rhythm of voices, in telling stories.