A complicated emotion can serve good ends and bad,
reveal the truth of who we are and what
we must have to go on, declare
our refusal to surrender,
even signal our strength, passion
for life, or
it can crowd the space between us
until no one can think straight, only react,
fight back, turning a small thing
into an end-of-the-world scenario.
This poem appears in my new book ROSES IN WINTER.