After the frost,
the sweet peas
rise from the dirt
like little green angels
with bowed heads
and tiny green wings—
it’s enough to make
a woman believe
small miracles can happen
if only she plants
the seed.
Posts Tagged ‘happiness’
Like Forgiveness, Like Happiness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged forgiveness, gardening, happiness, poem, poetry on May 31, 2017| Leave a Comment »
On the Corner of Main Street
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged happiness, poem, poetry on May 13, 2017| Leave a Comment »
There’s some stupidity in that,
Michael said as he paused from his work.
I had just been quoting a famous poet
who talked about being shamelessly happy,
and Michael, leaning on his broom
on a stoop of a store, said,
why not just be gloriously happy
or wonderfully happy,
and darned if that moment
the day didn’t shine brighter
as if all I had to do was ask for it.
Big Escape
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, happiness, poem, poetry on June 24, 2016| 1 Comment »
I thought if I made myself small enough
I could fit inside the box labeled happiness,
and I folded my dreams into neat little squares
and kept them on a shelf labeled later.
But life leaks.
Happiness knows no box.
And who is this woman unfolding the dreams,
wrapping them into blue turbans, green capes,
and magic carpets of every hue flying out of the box.
Where is she going?
Dang, she looks familiar.
One Path Toward Happiness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged happiness, poem, poetry, rain, surrender on October 26, 2015| 1 Comment »
One Invitation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged happiness, invitation, poem, poetry on July 6, 2015| 2 Comments »
Perhaps Happiness is This
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged happiness, poem, poetry, sufficiency on June 16, 2015| 1 Comment »
this nectarine not dripping
with golden juice, not sparkling with tang
but sweet enough
The Way It Is
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged happiness, paradox, poem, poetry, sadness on May 30, 2015| 2 Comments »
A woman sits in the park
in the grass, and she is happy.
It is not that she does not know
that all over the world, even
in her own twisting heart,
terrible things are happening.
It is not that she is trying
to pretend she does not know.
It is more, perhaps, that the happiness
rises up and she does not try
to pretend it isn’t there. Yes,
there it is, beside the growling burrs
of sadness, letting loose
all its tiny white parasol seeds
just as a dandelion does.
Some of them fly beyond her sight.
Some land in her sweater
and will not be pulled out,
no matter how hard she tries.
I Cut My Own Wound, Pour In My Own Salt
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged comparison, envy, happiness, jealousy, poem, poetry on September 21, 2014| 2 Comments »
I like to torture myself with thoughts
of how perfect her world is every day,
how much easier, more beautiful, more
pleasuresome than mine. Surely
the eagles in her sky make wider arcs
on their statelier, darker brown wings.
Her Easter lilies must fill her rooms
with sweeter more honest white perfume.
Her elderberries must have more bioflavinoids.
More antioxidants, too.
The earthworms in her garden are probably fatter.
The leaves on her elm trees are greener for sure.
I will not mention her grass.
If she rode an elephant, it would have jewels
dripping down its majestic, wrinkled head.
If she had an ermine, its fur would be whiter
than any snow found in my yard.
If I am the stroppy, shaggy emu, then she
is the egret with filamentous plumes, all milky
and showy, that cascade down her slender back.
If I am an eel, she’s an angelfish. If I’m cracked
and scrambled, she’s an ornate Easter egg.
Not that I want to be an Easter egg. Nor an egret.
Nor angelfish. It’s just that I want to be happy,
as happy as I tell myself she is.
*an E-poem for Lian Canty’s Alphabet Menagerie
Forgetting Everything Else
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged happiness, poem, poetry on August 15, 2014| 2 Comments »
All day we moved
from awe to awe,
from kiss to kiss,
from tenderness
to tenderness,
from dirt road
to bright field
to deep green grass
in sweet
astonishment
some days
are like this.
Game On
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged happiness, love, personal responsibility, poem, poetry on July 20, 2014| 3 Comments »
I so wanted
for you to be
the one to bring
me love and
happiness, but
the world
could hardly
conceal its sparkle
when it slapped
my own hand
on my heart
and said tag,
you’re it.
The Inevitable
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, happiness, mother, poem, poetry on June 25, 2014| 3 Comments »
By early afternoon, I have become
my mother. Despite mounting evidence
that the world is falling apart, I find
reasons to be grateful. The light in the leaves,
for instance. And the scent of the mint
in the garden that I let grow rampant,
the way my mother did. It is not that
I do not want to become my mother.
No, she was happy to become her mother,
and I am happy to become mine. Not
that I have any choice. I nod too much
and stay up too late and wear clothes
out of style because they make me happy.
I am glad I finally stopped fighting it.
After all, the world is falling apart,
and it’s easier to meet this fact
with a smile that often finds my face and some
very comfortable, though ugly, shoes.
Consolation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Alice Herz-Sommers, Darwin, extinction, happiness, parenting, Szymborska on December 26, 2013| 1 Comment »
Tonight as my nine-year-old son takes a bath
I sit on the toilet lid beside the abundant bubbles
and read to him from a murder mystery.
Many words he does not know.
Tenant. Testament. Motive.
I think to myself how a warm bath
is a fine place to learn of such things.
*
Barbara writes in her New Year’s letter,
“Something has shifted within me,
and in general I am happier, a curious
and inexplicable sensation!”
It occurs to me that my son would not know
the word inexplicable. It occurs to me
he will someday soon experience
inexplicable changes of his own.
*
Darwin, I read in Szymborska’s poem,
only liked novels with happy endings.
Was it the Dodo that colored him so?
*
Culprit.
Spasm.
Inheritance.
Content.
*
In fact, says Szymborska,
should the book’s final pages disappoint,
it would whip Darwin into such a rage
he would pitch the unhappy ending
and all its dry weight
into the blazing fire.
*
Part of me wishes
I could burn away any unhappiness
that might come to my boy.
Part of me believes in the words
of Alice Herz-Sommers,
the world’s oldest pianist and oldest
holocaust survivor:
even the bad is beautiful,
for it is part of life.
*
Barbara says that she’s brought Szymoborska
to read in the hermitage where she
will spend the holiday.
How I wish I might slip
between the pages of her book,
thin as a note card with a picture of a streamer fish,
so that I might slip out
of the pages and into her lap
and then spend hours with her
in the hermitage taking turns
reading out loud
the poems together.
*
My son, though he’s pruned,
begs me not to stop at Chapter Three.
We’ve just finished the part
with the maggots crawling out
of the man’s eye sockets as he lays
decomposing on a fine Persian rug.
Please, Mama, please, he says.
Just do it, keep reading, please?
*
Though I do not recall
from my own childhood reading
which one of the tenants
murders the man, nor do
I recall how the culprit does the deed,
I do recall that Darwin
would have remained
in his armchair, content.
*
Alice Herz-Sommers, age 110,
still practices piano every day.
Two hours in the morning.
Two hours after lunch.
It was not a happy ending
she was after. Come on out,
I say to my son. Time for bed.
We will read some more tomorrow.
Gretel Talks to the Birds
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, fairy tale, hansel and gretel, happiness, poem, poetry on June 6, 2013| 3 Comments »
Of course you thought
we were feeding you.
What else would we be doing
with that old, hard bread.
You were, just as we were,
only thinking of survival.
We were all so hungry then.
There’s a woman here
in Happily Ever After who
feeds poison to the birds.
She says the birds peck
at her red ripe cherries,
and where is the happily
in that? So she hides
the poison in Wonder bread
and then spreads it on the ground.
I’m telling you
this as your friend. Stay in
the woods. Happiness is not
all as it looks.
More Practice
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, happiness, love, poem, poetry, present, what is on May 23, 2013| 7 Comments »
There I go again,
thinking that if
life were different
it would be better.
In specific, I wish
that you were different.
Which is to say,
more like me.
Which would,
I do not need to think
long about this,
be a total disaster.
Okay, so that’s not
what I want, I don’t
know what I want,
I just know that I don’t
want what is. And that,
I don’t need to read
Tricycle magazine
to know this, is the recipe
for unhappiness.
Okay. So I tell myself,
pretend everything
is the way it should be:
You the way you are.
Me the way I am. And
all those other folks
screwing up too, just
like screwing-up you,
just like screwing-up me.
And then there’s the goldfish
that died in the middle of it all.
And the rash that came back.
And the news. There is always
the news. The night leans in
to laugh at me.
I lean back, knowing
I won’t be caught.
For a moment,
I almost believe
that everything’s for the best
till I see the one who thinks
she has to think that,
and then I’m falling again
into the night’s leaky net.
Three Definitions of Happiness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged haiku, happiness, poems on January 12, 2013| 4 Comments »
standing in the snow
dreaming of standing
in the snow
*
my daggers
letting them gather dust
regardless who walks in
*
starting a fire
remembering even good logs
need space to burn
Seven True Stories
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged earth, haiku, happiness, lose the self, love, nature, opening, poem, poetry, sky on October 6, 2012| 2 Comments »
Seven True Stories
divided highway
late night, coming in my lane
head lights, a story
*
the sky and I,
both of us opening—
peal of unrung bells
*
the old cottonwood
tell me, when is the last time
you climbed it?
*
that ornery face,
yep, I folded it up,
put it in a safe place
*
laying in the grass
our bodies altars—
gold leaf offerings
*
everything shimmering
how could I not French kiss
the chill air
*
that bird, wonder if
he too gets so stunned by sky
he forgets how to sing
The Price of Happiness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, happiness, love, poem, poetry, quietude on June 7, 2012| 2 Comments »
Sorrow happens, hardship happens, the hell with it, who never knew the price of happiness, will not be happy.
—Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Just as the splinters
slip in a bit deeper
beneath the bruise, just
as the clench in my
chest clenches tighter,
just as the tap roots
of ache push lower
into my groin and tease
new depths of darkness,
it occurs to me, soft
as sheepskin, weightless
as being swung off my feet,
how lucky it is to love, and though
the roots still reach
their terrible reach,
and the splinters slip in,
oh please, not so deep,
there is a strange
joy that blooms
in my cheeks
like cherry stain,
like joy.
While from the Kitchen Wafts the Scent of Something Burning on the Stove
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, advertising, happiness, idealism, life, perfection, poem, poetry on May 23, 2012| 5 Comments »
Flipping through the magazine
I find an ad for my life. They are selling it
at a discount—20 percent off if you call
this month. The children are smiling.
Their clothes are clean, their hair
brushed, and in the picture they
are picking up their yard toys, laughing.
My husband, very handsome, smiles at me adoringly,
and I smile back. My teeth are perfect,
though a tad yellow, my smile real.
My Volvo, sea foam with tan seats,
must have just been through the car wash,
and it shines in the golden light beside the garden,
which is weeded and hoed. The lettuce,
already up, is thinned, and at least
from this distance there are no aphids
in the leaves. In the upper left,
the solar eclipse has just begun, and
there is a sense that the birdsong
in the picture has just quieted
so that one might better hear
the hushed rush of the river, not pictured.
In the lower right corner
an asterisk snuggles up against
some very fine print that mentions
how the picture is merely a suggestion.
I know that the next four pages
will be black and white text, 8 point,
with testimonies from my friends,
my parents, my therapists. They will
divulge all the secrets I tried for years
to hide under my skin. Six columns
of side effects: A predilection toward
weeping in public. Inability to remember
important dates. Addictions to Diet Pepsi, and
listening to a cappella versions of Lady Gaga.
Aversion to going to sleep. Perfectionism. Erroneous
belief in an ability to mind read. Decades
of low self esteem. It will go on and on,
getting more serious as it goes.
They will leave out the worst of it,
afraid to deter even the most
enthusiastic buyers. I will not read it,
knowing it well. I will just leap into the photo,
write SOLD across the top in big red letters
and point out to my husband that we almost
missed seeing the eclipse, but it’s not yet too late.
Then he’ll pull out of his new electric gator
four pairs of handy welder’s glasses—
I’ll offer two pair to my kids, but they
will be too busy arguing about whose
glasses are better to actually put them on,
but my husband and I will stand there together
in that warm bath of light,
marveling at how we almost
forgot to look up.