Happiness and Blue Moons

SO MUCH HAPPINESS

by Naomi Shihab Nye from Words under the Words (The Eighth Mountain Press)

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 share it,
and in that way, be known.

I've been keeping this poem in my pocket (aka my draft file), waiting for the perfect day in which to share it and after last night, I think today is that day. 

It's not that anything remarkable happened last night, at least nothing I can put my finger on.  I was sitting by the labyrinth during Cathedral Crossroads people watching.  Some visitors were sitting in the nave with eyes closed, letting the strains of Karen's harp and flute music float around them like snowflakes settling in their laps.  Others wandered around in quiet reverence as night pulled down shades of darkness and shifted their attention from glass to stone.  And then there were the walkers, the ones who came for the labyrinth and embarked upon its path like dancers taking the stage in a purposeful ballet.   

Later as I was walking to my car with some friends, I pointed out the almost full moon hanging high in the night sky.  Friday night is the second full moon in August, a rare occurence and the origin of  the expression "once in a blue moon."  I'm often content but happiness is something different, more rare, more fleeting, more floating as Naomi Shihab Nye observes.  And last night as I noticed all these people and then the large, lovely moon, I was  overcome with a wave of happiness definitely larger than the National Cathedral could contain.  Larger than even the day could contain as it's spilled over into this Wednesday morning and there's every indication it will continue into the afternoon.