Thank you, Ross Gay

For today I found delight. Because of you
              I took my little index finger
and pointed it toward the sky, and I said,
Delight!               I found it
in an elderly couple
canoeing across a huge mountain
lake, in early morning, in neon-orange
life-vests, together, fighting
against a light wind, their wooden paddles dipping
and rising in-sync into chilly autumn
air tinted with woodsmoke
and, just to their right, swam a black and
white loon with its apple-red eye, its needle-
beak. It screeched,                         and I believe it too
said                Delight!
The couple’s conversation carried
to the water’s edge, where their words
were muffled by flimsy waves
dying on the shoreline. I don’t know
if I knew them. I couldn’t tell
from that far away,
but I know that I love them
today for this delight, and love this for them,
that they may be taking these minutes
to do exactly this, and love this
for me that, for a moment, I gave my fingers
a break from yanking vetch
and bittersweet. I found delight in hoisting
my heavy head out of the weeds

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Josh Nicolaisen lives in New Hampshire and teaches writing at Plymouth State University. He holds an MFA from Randolph College and is a Pushcart Prize nominee. He has been awarded a grant from Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference and fellowships from Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. His work has appeared in Colorado Review, Hunger Mountain Review, Permafrost, Appalachian Review, Four Way Review, Bellingham Review, and elsewhere. Find him at www.oldmangardening.com/poetry