A dish of happiness

I popped in for a few moments with Sue and her grandbaby. Life is good for us all right now. I think I’ve posted this poem before, but it calls to me again today.

So Much Happiness
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. 

****

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.