So much happiness

Rubber duckies, Tucker Pond, Salisbury, NH, July 2006, HP Photosmart R817, Exposure 1/540 sec @ f4.5, ISO 50, no flash © Steven Crisp [Click on the photo to enlarge]

I came across this poem today — sent to me like any other e-mail, easily lost to the junk folder or removed by a mindless delete key. But thankfully not.

Take a look at it. No! Taste it, consume it, bathe in it, relish it, savor its spices, cuddle in its warm embrace, lay down in its bed of truth, slow dance to its gentle rhythm, while you sing along with its lyrics.

For I have nothing to add. Just let happiness be -— you don’t have to do a damn thing.

So Much Happiness, a poem by 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 noise and dust
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 to share it,
And in that way, be known.