To wish you happiness this Christmas and in the coming year, here is my latest favourite poem for you to put in your stocking. It beautifully reminds us that happiness cannot be bounced in with jingles and razzamatazz. Nor can it be prevented. It arrives unexpectedly, anywhere, anytime, to anyone, to everyone.
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
basketmaker,
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.
