By Cindy Wallace, Associate Professor of English, St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan, re-posted from her Facebook account

The dappled light is why—
and the apple’s red skin, its
sticky-chin juice—
the way the breeze feels on your
arms after a winter that wouldn’t stop.
I want us all to know this,
as much of this as a body can take
in, for at least eight decades,
or a dozen:
the chickadees’ black caps and
the donuts’ perfect glaze and
the first-kiss flush and
the glory-stretch of toes freed
from all-day boots—
the glory-stretch of an infant
fresh from sleep—
the glory-stretch of a life
wide open to its loves—

not gunned down in a desk,
in a store,
in a church,
in a home—
not bled out,
cut short,
bound in a box of wood
in a dug plot of dirt—
not sacrificed to some god
of cruelty and false freedom,
some lie of rights,
some fetish of cold steel.

No: life wide and long and good and right, imperfect and
pained at points but shot through (see?) with joy,
the apples, the sundogs, the lilies, the unbidden songs—
flung open, stretched out, glory after glory,
glory upon glory—
the chickadees,
the waking up,
the breeze,
the blessed skin.