Before I Met Her

Before I met her

I always laughed at cartoons

alone,

was astonished before paintings & poems

privately;

 

but now

five years later

I pass the magazine to her,

the one with the crazy cartoons.

Look at this, I say, & she does and smiles

Span our faces & rumble our bellies

like little laughing Buddhas;

 

Trouble shared is trouble halved,

my mother used to say — but Joy

Works inversely:

It is doubled when spent with another.