Happiness

   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,
   that 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 every door
   until he finds you asleep midafternoon
   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 shade of pine barrens,
   to rain falling on the open sea,
   to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

   ~ Jane Kenyon ~