Prompted into Happiness

Write a happiness poem rich in image.

If happiness is elusive, not quite imaginable for you right now, write about its very elusiveness.

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Today I was Happy

So I Made This Poem

                                 –   James Wright

As the plump squirrel scampers

Across the roof of the corncrib

The moon suddenly stands up in the darkness,

And I see that it is impossible to die.

Each moment of time is a mountain

An eagle rejoices in the oak trees of heaven,

Crying

This is what I wanted.

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Why I am Happy

–  William Stafford

Now has come an easy time. I let it

roll.  There is a lake somewhere

so blue and far nobody owns it.

A wind comes by and a willow listens

Gracefully.

I hear all this, every summer. I laugh

and cry for every turn of the world,

its terribly cold, innocent spin.

That lake stays blue and free;

it goes on and on.

And I know where it is.

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from  Happiness

                       – Raymond Carver

Happiness.  It comes on

unexpectedly.  And goes beyond, really,

any early morning talk about it

So Much Happiness  (middle stanza)

Naomi Shihab Nye

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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….

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Why

                  – Wendell Berry

Why all the embarrassment

about being happy?

Sometimes I’m as happy

as a sleeping dog,

and for the same reasons,

and for others.

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from Happiness

                        – Jane Kenyon

There’s no accounting for happiness,

or the way it turns up like a prodigal

who comes back to the dust at your feet

having squandered a fortune far away