-- The Experience of Happiness --

by John Herlihy

The experience of happiness feels for everyone the same,

Arrives from an unexpected realm with no one to blame.

Just as the perfume of the rose adds minutes to the hour,

The perfume of happiness intoxicates with special power.

How it settles into the mind and heart as morning dew,

Listen to the wind chimes that the summer breeze blew.

To savor the sweet aromas the garden flowers have spun,

To savor the taste of the day that the hours have wrung.

The experience of unhappiness feels for everyone different,

Also of an unexpected realm with no one feeling indifferent.

Just as the beauty of a rose marred by presence of a thorn,

So too the beauty of life marred by sorrows in being born.

One may lose a child thru the sickness of the terminally ill,

Another may suffer a broken-hearted love and its bitter pill.

Day by day life offers up its feelings that border on distress,

Miseries to remind of the wrongs that we need to confess.

The universe may be infinitely large and time may be eternal,

Yet happiness is found in the smallest of moments universal.

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Copyright © John Herlihy

Friday 26 January 2024