The Ministry of Happiness

Happiness Season a Beginning

Hello my friends, the holiday season is upon us, Halloween and the Day of the Dead have passed us by and my favorite holiday Thanksgiving is just weeks away, already the stores have started crowding their shelves with the trappings of Christmas.  The end of the year is always tough for me it feels cold and alone.  Christmas has always been my least favorite holiday, the depth of winter sets in, I never feel lonelier than I do during the days and weeks around Christmas.  So, last year I put together 30 posts, 30 days of happiness to help you stay up and positive during the holidays.  This year we’ll be a little less structured, start with a poem and give you more days, more posts, to help you have even a happier day and holiday season than usual. ~ Rev Kane

Happiness by Susan Griffin

I am not used

to this. (There is always

something wrong.)

Look at it

the bright early tree.

(I am trying to find out

how you fell.)

The leaves have already turned.

(I want you to see

this, how they

glow outside the glass.)

Morning light strikes

differently. For so

many years I hardly

had time to know such

moments. They struck me

with such intensity

I would have said

battered me open.

I never understood

they were mine.

I was panicked.

Unhappiness caught up with me

all the time.

Did you know

the speed of light never alters

even when you go faster

it will be

still that much faster

than you?

(I am thinking that in your fall

something momentous occurred.)

What I see as beautiful

I want you to see too.

Next door, the workmen are hammering.

Very soon we’ll go to lunch.

For some reason this moves me to tears.

How life is.

(One does not have to explain

what occurs. One only need say

it has meaning.)

Years ago, when I was young

I traveled to Italy, took in

the great sights. I was in awe, yet

I did not understand

seeing Masaccio’s frescoes

fading like shadows into the walls,

this would be the only time

nor that

I would never forget.

Those muted shades are

still with me, as possession

and longing, and the view too

of the square before that church

the air, newly spring,

that day, all of it.

Life, I have finally begun to realize,

is real.

(All this time you recover

from falling

will sink indelibly into mind.)

The leaves

may fall before you are able

to see them. Science

has recently learned

the line

of existence is soft

and stretches out like a field

wind and light shaping the grass

energy

of sight giving consciousness

force. In the meantime

we live out our lives.

(This morning we talked for so long

everything became lucid.

How can I say what I see?)

At each turning

perfection eludes me.

One moment is not like another.

Last spring

the house next door caught fire.

There was the smell of gas.

We thought

both houses would go.

I vanished up the hill,

went to the house of a friend

where we listened for flames

and to that aria from Italian

opera, was it the one of love,

or jealousy, or grief?

My house was untouched.

Now the one next door is painted,

fixed. In place of

perfection, the empty hands

I turned out to the world

are filled.

With what? A letter

half written, the notes

I make on this page,

this new feeling about my shoulders

of age, that sad child’s story

you told me this morning,

the workmen’s tools sounding

and stopping. What? As time

moves through me, does it also

move through you?

I keep remembering what you said,

ways you have of seeing (and that

light must have curved with

you fall.) This

is the paradox of vision:

Sharp perception softens

our existence in the world.

 

                  1986