If I could, I would spread joy across your face 
like wild blueberry jam and slabs of butter 
slathered on toasted bread—the kind you’d eat, 
then end up with face and hands sticky, needing 
to be licked clean while you sat with giggling 
friends and siblings on a sunny day in June 
or July on Grandma’s wide porch. 

I would watch joy illuminate your face the way 
your grandfather’s bedtime stories did after 
an evening of catching fireflies in jars—the way 
those fairy godmother lanterns of blinking 
exuberance magnified wide eyes on peering faces 
painted by this flash and that shine. 

I would speak to you of joy with words unfettered 
from the page and swirling around as if they 
were you as a child again—your father’s 
reliable hands holding yours in the centripetal force 
of love’s innate security. 

I would sing you joy until it bursts from your throat 
in robin warbles at sunrise, when shivering leaves 
shimmer in sun dapples, or until it pours 
as brown thrasher waterfalls from treetops 
like breezes caressing children who romp 
and scamper, limbs akimbo, on sun-dazed grass, 
who splatter May rain puddles with feet bare 
as uncapped noggins. 

I would bestow on you the joys of watching 
your own children and grandchildren, nieces, nephews 
and great-grandchildren experience for themselves 
each and every one of the reasons you ever found 
in this generous world for rejoicing. 

—First published in the author’s most recent book, The Currency of His Light (Turning Plow Press, 24 March 2023; available at Watermark Books & Café); poem appears here with his permission.

Roy J. Beckemeyer’s

latest poetry collections include The Currency of His Light (Turning Plow Press, 2023) and Mouth Brimming Over (Blue Cedar Press, 2019). Stage Whispers (Meadowlark Books, 2018) won the 2019 Nelson Poetry Book Award. Amanuensis Angel (Spartan Press, 2018) comprises ekphrastic poems inspired by modern artists’ depictions of angels. His first book, Music I Once Could Dance To (Coal City Press, 2014), was a 2015 Kansas Notable Book. With Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, he co-edited Kansas Time+Place: An Anthology of Heartland Poetry (Little Balkans Press, 2017). His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize (2015 and 2020) and for Best of the Net (2018), and was selected for The Best Small Fictions 2019.

Beckemeyer serves on the editorial boards of Konza Journal and River City Poetry. A retired engineer and scientific journal editor, he is also a nature photographer who, in his spare time, researches the mechanics of insect flight and the Paleozoic insect fauna of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Alabama. He lives in Wichita, Kansas, where he and his wife recently celebrated their 60th anniversary.

Please visit author’s website for more information about his books, as well as links to interviews and readings (scroll down his About page for the link-list).

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Megarhyssa, ekphrastic poem by Beckemeyer in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 14, August 2022), nominated by MacQ for the Pushcart Prize

⚡ The Color of Blessings in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 5, October 2020), nominated by MacQ for the Pushcart

⚡ Featured Artist in KYSO Flash (Issue 12, Summer 2019); showcasing Beckemeyer’s poetry, prose poetry, and insect photography

⚡ Words for Snow, a prose poem in KYSO Flash (Issue 9, Spring 2018), which was selected for reprinting in The Best Small Fictions 2019