Before You

Before you

I always laughed at cartoons

alone,

was astonished before paintings & poems

privately;

but now I pass the magazine to you,

the one with the crazy cartoons.

Look at this, I say, & you do 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 shared with another.

*pic courtesy of Pinterest by John Currin