The Periodic Pleasure of
Small Happenings is upon us²
Happiness is a like a Crystal: Fair,
Exquisite, Clear – Broken in a million
Pieces, Shattered, Scattered far & near³
When has Happiness ever required much
Evidence to start its Leaf-Green Breathing?⁴
A Specific, Constant, Clear-Sky, Unrelated-
To-Anything, Never-Shifting, Nameless and
Changeless Perfection of my own Happiness⁵
One who Knows is not equal to one who Loves
One who Loves is not equal to one who takes Joy⁶
Oh Happiness! Our Being’s End and Aim! Good,
Pleasure, Ease, Content! Whate’er thy Name⁷
Happiness has to do with Reason, and only
Reason earns it – what I’ve been given you
Can’t earn and can’t keep, and often don’t
Even Recognize at the time – I mean Joy⁸
If All the Griefs I am to have would
Only come today – I am so Happy I
Believe they’d Laugh & Run away⁹
The Efflux of the Soul: Happiness¹⁰
¹ Friedrich von Schiller, Ode to Joy
² Meena Alexander, Darling Coffee
³ Eliza Cook, Where There’s a Will There’s a Way
⁴ Mary Oliver, The Truro Bear
⁵ Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
⁶ Confucius tr. Edward Slingerland, Analects 6.20
⁷ Alexander Pope, Epistle IVs
⁸ Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
⁹ Emily Dickinson, If All the Griefs
¹⁰ Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road