Happiness, by Jane Kenyon

Happiness by Jane Kenyon, from Otherwise

There’s just no accounting for happiness,

or the way it turns up like a prodigal

who comes back to the dust at your feet

Having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?

You make a feast in honor of what was lost,

and take from its place the finest garment,

which you saved for an occasion you could not imagine,

and you weep night and day

to know that you were not abandoned,

The happiness saved its most extreme form

for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never knew about, who flies a single-engine plane onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes into town and inquires at ever door until he finds you asleep mnidafternoon as you so often are during the unmerciful hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell

it comes to the woman sweeping the street

with a birch broom,

to the child whose mother has passed out from drink.

It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing a sock,

to the pusher, to the basket maker,

and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots in the night.

It even comes to the boulder in the perpetual shad of pine barrens,

to rain falling on the open sea, to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.