Happiness is

Happiness is nothing – it is stopping

To let the world do its work around you.

It is shrugging off the ceaseless disappointments.

It is accepting our uselessness, but doing good.

It is holding one’s disabilities with reverent discernment.

Listen, you don’t have to know anything to be happy.

Just let the sun burn your back and

Let fear strangle your stomach.

Let love hammer you to the floor.

Permit all that appears good to go bad and become good again.

The guesswork that governs our days is the condition of our perplexity;

Life is in us, tasting one shapely distraction after another, and

Like the bees doing their business, we are doing ours

By groping at Beauty, calling it sadness and making of it our Loving,
It is saying there, there to the moon as it weeps on your lap.

You are the moon and I am alone, as we all are, all of the time.

Still we challenge that decree by making love, desperately.

Still I move towards the cold air, to the surprise of jasmine night

That delights, every time.