So Much Happiness
-Naomi Shihab Nye-
It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.
But happiness floats.
It doesn't need you to hold it down.
It doesn't need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
and disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
and now live over a quarry of dust and noise
cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
it too could wake up filled with possibilities
of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
and love even the floor which needs to be swept,
the soiled linens and scratched records...
Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,
and in that way, be known.
I bought a book of poems before I left for Italy, about 7 months ago in Santa Cruz, and I came across this poem which has touched my heart ever since. The highlighted words hold such truth for my life because I actually used to live in my own studio which was called the "Tree House" in California but now live over a street full of dust and noise each day....but even this CANNOT make me unhappy because it is about something deeper...something more meaningful than the way happiness floats. As much as I hate to see happiness disappear from my rooftop, I am left with something that stays. And as much as I forget this truth, when I remember, it is the sweetest taste.
