EUSTRESS

As well as the usual kind of stress,
there's good stress, also known
as eustress, an awkward sounding word,
like someone calling a lost dog
whose existence they've ceased to believe in
but hoping, somehow, that it might return.

When bad stress lifts we imagine
we're no longer stressed at all though everything,
of course, is stressed at all times, a violin, the joy
of a lost dog found again. A certain tension
is necessary to keep things from collapsing
into stray molecules, flotsam, even when

we're so relaxed we could drift away, floating.