Friday, May 17, 2013

There's Just No Accounting for Happiness, or the Way It Turns Up Like a Prodigal




Lordy, my ears are lustful, so easily and insatiably satisfied sluts. If only my eyes, my Kind were so sloppy - I've doses of tsundoku and smallness.

In bigger news, MomCat (the mother of the brood of ferals that moved into our shed seven years ago), after years of first running away when seen to cautiously holding her ground to curiously approaching before running away to brazenly asking for breakfast to letting me scratch her back when she eats last night happily and eagerly crawled into my lap:





HAPPINESS

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.


13 comments:

  1. I loves me some Marc Ribot. Thanks!

    Yea, Mom Cat! The Medusa-Eye pic is one of my favorites, though I hope to see more Fleabus action when Plant moves her indentured servitude from Ohio to Our Nation's Capital.

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  2. Oh, she's been back since last weekend, but I think the days of voluntary photography duties are over and I don't feel like imposing compulsory photography duties on her. And MomCat photo is mine, though I don't feel like imposing compulsory photography duties on me.

    Will try to set up a dinner in next week.

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  3. Did her eyes burn holes through your head?

    I thought it said Sudoku. I've got a case of that other thing myself: books as fetish objects.

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    Replies
    1. The helpful hint for which you look
      is hidden somewhere in a book.

      Delete
  4. From Chin's 33 Happy Moments:

    28. To open the window and let a wasp out from the room. Ah, is this not happiness?

    to which Mongo, at The Moment replied

    Both pleased in their own ways.

    http://beforenine.blogspot.com/2013/03/reprint-heaven-just-because-thats-why.html

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  5. Thanks, mr c, I love Mongo's smile in his profile photo. He's today's addition to New Gags.

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  6. Confession: I usually skip the poem.

    Glad I didn't today.

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  7. Sure, soon, wish I could find the youtube with the crain but it's gone.

    ReplyDelete
  8. sh' is a fa .. crane .. . boatL , and qew ... .

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  9. as gord downie says - a head by a cent.

    ReplyDelete