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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It was nearly 75 degrees here on Wednesday! I took two walks to enjoy the outdoors and switched the bird feeders; now that it's after November 1, we're allowed to have birdseed instead of hummingbird feeders, though it took me a long time to wash those out. Pretty much everyone I know was in a great mood about the election so there was lots of texting and messaging, too.
I talked to one of my high school friends and watched the second half of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales with Cel and Laurie. After dinner we watched the Halloween Ghosts we missed last week, and now we're finishing the new season of Lupin, which is very Da Vinci Code/National Treasure. Fun at the Autumn Knights Renfaire last weekend:
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