These things there are when you are not looking

Perhaps you are looking for happiness
tiring your eyes in its elusiveness
letting your arms be pillars of a temple
that crumbles before pleas much too high;

Perhaps you are always where you are not
counting the time for time yet to be
saving today for tomorrow
starving in present abundance while
feeding thoughts of future scarcity;

Perhaps Easter is just an egg to hatch
one more Christmas by Thanksgiving
and leftovers are to be served cold by New Year
with morsels of next summer, fried green;

Perhaps love follows the recipe they all swear by
and never fails to taste exactly as deceptively
as they say it is supposed to, anyway;

Perhaps… perhaps you are not looking
at all these things there are while you look
far too intently for too long much too far:

And yet, there are acutely happy moments
in days of chronic unhappiness;

And tiny, aeriform gestures of kindness
billowing up from a ground bearing
the stench of decomposing spite –

Yes, of breath naturally rising and hands
naturally lifting and eyes naturally falling
like reflections into cores willing to unravel
and naturally fly;

Because there are wings that would rather flutter
and be as brief as the memory light retains of a moth
than be the forever possible imperial butterfly
forever impending in the cocoon.

And there are clumps of three and four-leaved clover
along the path, being simply and equally green
for feet bare of all but keenness to experience
how good they naturally feel –

And feet that, along the same path, learn with the seasons
that other leaves would never delightfully rustle if green
were never to turn yellow and naturally crisp.

And there are dreams being dreamed and lives
being lived and poems being written and poets
in love and love being made like a dream life
writes in poetic prose about happiness –

That thing there is in all these things there are
when you are not looking.

-- © 2007 Alexandra* ~ OneLight*®