Poem for Thursday and Canal in Spring

Happiness
By Jane Kenyon

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.

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I had a really nice long call at lunchtime with my high school friends, one of whom is dealing with a family situation that people in my family have some expertise about, so after two and a half hours on Zoom and then actually eating lunch, I then got to talk to my sister quite a bit, plus I had some Freecycle and Marketplace pickups so I got a tiny bit of the clutter out of the house. It rained all day, so I did not go looking at scenery, though I did admire damp flowers and do a couple of long distance Pokemon raids. 

We watched The Masked Singer, which was highly complimentary to the unmasked, followed by The New Mutants, which I thought was better than its reviews, though the whitewashing of two major characters is disturbing. It doesn't contribute anything major to the X-Men mythology but I like how it explored its particular corner and characters. We put on the White Sox-Cleveland game while it was still a perfect game, which didn't last but even a no-hitter is exciting to watch! From the C&O Canal last weekend: