Sky rolls in and leaves the sand
as much sky as that far horizon, itself
as hard and gray as here, the nearer edge:
star-shelled wet horizon under toe.

We've said and say again
our happiness is all and only this. That is
to say, all this and only this, a moment
of a day. Or maybe in the night

a fire-worked flower hung sizzling
in space, in our startled headlights a fawn
become the spindly dancing joy
of knowing Now.

About the poet: Don Russ publishes regularly and widely in the literary magazines and is the author of Dream Driving (Kenneaw State University Press, 2007) and the chapbook Adam's Nap (Billy Goat Press, 2005). His poem "Girl with Gerbil," originally published in The Cincinnati Review, was selected by Mark Doty for inclusion in The Best American Poetry 2012.