Saturday, July 18, 2020

It Comes to the Monk in His Cell

  • At midnight last night my domain either renewed for another year successfully and the blog is still here or did not renew successfully for another year and and the blog is still here or the blog did not renew successfully for another year but
  • meanwhile, I am on Mt Desert Island, this lake, the mountain behind it our backyard, Acadia National Park, today's sunrise




  • And we're drinking coffee, listening to Shrunken Planet, the most beautiful radio show ever every week, the hummingbirds are here, flittering and dipping into nectar, and I am crying happy for the first time since...?




    
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.

1 comment:

  1. that's a good looking photo of a good-looking place

    i wondered what would come up in a duckduckgo search for happiness "james tate"

    here are the first two results:

    TATE, James and Madelaine Dixie Tate; and Maria Chaffey ...
    Search domain hwtproject.ca/directory/tate-james-and-madelaine-dixie-tate-and-maria-chaffey-tate/hwtproject.ca/directory/tate-james-and-madelaine-dixie-tate-and-maria-chaffey-tate/
    James Tate remembers this machine well, although it was 68 years ago. ... Mr. Tate is happy in the knowledge of a long and useful life comprising much of romance, hard toil, sorrow, happiness and achievement, and now is enjoying the well-earned rest with pleasure in retrospect, and is an interested onlooker at the ever-changing pageantry of life.


    Happy As The Day Is Long (James Tate Poems) - Famous ...
    Search domain www.inspirationalstories.com/poems/happy-as-the-day-is-long-james-tate-poems/https://www.inspirationalstories.com/poems/happy-as-the-day-is-long-james-tate-poems/
    I take the long walk up the staircase to my secret room. Today's big news: they found Amelia Earhart's shoe, size 9. 1992: Charlie Christian is bebopping at Minton's in 1941. Today, the Presidential primaries have failed us once again. We'll look for our excitement elsewhere, in the last snow that is falling, in tomorrow's […]

    as for me, i am happy right now as i bake a chocolate cake that started as a brownie mix - missus charley requested something more cake-like after a series of brownies - more eggs, more fat, said somebody out there in the webiverse - it's in the oven right now and smells good, we shall soon see how it turns out

    may the creative forces of the universe smile in the direction of all who come to read these words, if any

    ReplyDelete