Happiness

It is intoxicating. The smell of the coming heat lingering in the early morning air. The warm breeze as it brushes aside the window sheers. The staunch determination of perennials as they push their way out of the ground. They are fierce and I love them for it. The tulips - red, yellow, orange, and purple. Their vibrance and beauty pierces me every time. They just scream joy. The lilacs, oh the lilacs. I cannot wait to bury my nose into them and drink in their scent. Grass. Green grass. Grass that is too long. Grass that tickles my feet. Dirt. Dark brown earth crammed deep under my fingernails, staining my flesh, my calloused hands. My children. Sharing the day with them. Experiencing with them for the first time one of my favorite places in the world: A cemetery. The Riverside Cemetery, rich with life. A sacred place, hallowed ground. Popcorn. Popcorn heavily salted and doused in Parmesan cheese sprinkled on a striped napkin. The Hundred Acre Wood. Reading how Pooh met Tigger and how pleased Pooh was that Tigger did not like honey. Poetry. The Mississippi River. Serene and calm today. She is always in my blood. My daughter in Ethiopia. Lucia. Her name means Light. She is coming home soon. So soon. Hope. Promise. Resurrection. Life. It is intoxicating.

Happiness
Carl Sandburg

I asked the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell
me what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss the work of
thousands of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though
I was trying to fool with them
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along
the Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with
their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion.

Bath
Carl Sandburg

A man saw the whole world as a grinning skull and
faces. Nothing counts. Everything is a fake. Dust to
dust and ashes to ashes and then an old darkness and a
useless silence. So he saw it all. Then he went to a
Mischa Elman concert. Two hours waves of sound beat
on his eardrums. Music washed something or other
inside him. Music broke down and rebuilt something or
other in his head and heart. He joined in five encores
for the young Russian Jew with the fiddle. When he
got outside his heels hit the sidewalk a new way. He
was the same man in the same world as before. Only
there was a singing fire and a climb of roses everlastingly
over the world he looked on.

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