Happiness.
Published 1 year, 5 months ago in My life.A poem by Naomi Shihab-Nye
It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness
With sadness there is something to rub against, a wound to tend with lotion and cloth
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.
But happiness floats
It doesn’t need you to hold it down
It doesn’t need anything
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing, and disappears when it wants to
You are happy either way
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
and now live over a quarry of noise and dust
cannot make you unhappy
Everything has a life of its own
it too could wake up filled with possibilities
of coffee cake and ripe peaches
and love even the floor which needs to be swept
the soiled linens and scratched records …..
Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness
you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,
and in that way, be known.
“Let the beauty we love be what we do.” Rumi
8 Responses to “Happiness.”
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what lovely imagery. thanks for sharing!
My pleasure gadfly. It struck a chord……….so had to play it.
Spreading happiness just as we read this.
My contribution is to smile at people
i do not know- particularly the oldies.
I have this notion (and shadow helps too) that
just this one simple act makes a difference.
cheerio
shadowmaster
what a snuggly poem, wuverly. I still have to look up veronica shoffstall.
have had a look at veronica s and not bad, not bad at all
its way special……………with every goodbye- you learn.
Very nice Winnie!
what did you mean on my blog about multiple identites?
A really lovely peom about a really great gift…..the ability to feel happiness, as being always within reach.
Showing my age now I remember Louise Hay saying may years ago. “It is only a thought, and a thought can be changed”….I hold that thought on my bad hair days and deliberately focus on achieving the “happiness” version.
For me, there is so much more happiness to be had, than sadness. The beautiful smile of a young child just pulls one away from sadness most of the time, and if I don’t have my own child (grand) available I use a stranger’s, with much the same reward.