POEM: “Messenger (Happiness)” — My dear, you don’t understand “happiness!” / You expect so damn much from it!
Messenger (Happiness)
My dear, you don’t understand “happiness!”
You expect so damn much from it!
You want it to stay on, to stay put
to never leave your side
like a satchel that keeps banging
your thigh…
Do you wear this purse to bed?!
In the shower, or in the garden?!
Why do you insist then
that it should be constant?
And measured in the same way
as years before now when you dreamed it?
Happiness is nothing but perspective.
Go get it.
Happiness is acknowledgment
of a greed for something not in your remit
Nor in your wallet or that you need.
Like envy.
Happiness is your insurance policy
against change and fear of
how it will leave you in its wake.
And we all know we pay too much anyways
for insurance and of the high rates.
The key to Happiness is –
Not having it.
And to have taken risks
so you know what you’re made of.
Happiness is knowing:
You can handle this
and that you won’t melt
when it’s raining.
Happiness, dear, is your simplest thing
— not avoidance, nor escape, nor drowning.
Happiness is a total FACING
through which, my love, effacement
of all the pains and blames become:
translucent
and melt the fuck away in your
forgiveness.
These days, for me, happiness is:
The satin smooth liquid curve of a hollandaise sauce
on a poached egg I can’t really afford
and once punctured drips warm
that I enjoy so much I enjoy with toasts.
It’s the odd velvet curl of a rishi green tea
that seems so healing, that I purposefully drink
so slowly, so ever so very, very slowly.
It’s the busy scenes of downtown streets that signal
I somehow packed up all my bags – for real
and with faith, belief, and a real net-less leap
came here alone, few know, and in a different province
tonight I sleep.
Finally, isn’t happiness the body knowledge
of being loved and sexed, (for me it is vital, important)
and climaxing with a beautiful lover Other in bed
and the recognition that if it doesn’t happen frequent
that its transience you ‘get,’ and RESPECT?
Happiness just … happens, often haphazard
and happenstance, doesn’t it?
Just watch a flower grow, die,
and vanish
and you’ll know happiness was in
the impermanent
and the fleeting experience of
its scent,
And Nature’s lessons.
Like a warm-skinned man
and his slight smell and imprint,
happiness washes off today
but you will pass by some more
tomorrow.
But you may not know it
Till it brushes by you
So let your senses find your happy
And put your brain to rest..
My dear, you don’t understand “happiness!”
You expect so damn much from it!
You want it to stay on, to stay put
to never leave your side
like a satchel that keeps banging
your thigh…
Like a bag of things that never
leaves your back
which you carry around
like a messenger of stuff.
But surely the weight of it gets too much.
Let go, put it down,
and rest here a moment
— watch, it will come.
OH! I see it there for you…
There it is! Right now!
But don’t touch…
You must not hold on…
Sylvie Hill, Montreal, September 28, 2019