Happiness is a carefully cultivated thing, practiced daily
There is so much to mount—but what about the beauty?

What about the world that teems with life right outside the door
or in the ignored cobbed-webbed corners of a room?
The needle-legged spider is just as beautiful
in her web-quivering movement
as the shimmering green flies feasting,
their metallic bodies in dance with the vultures
around a soft pelted fawn
whose ribs could not withstand the patriotic RAM driver’s
pride and joy;
a silver prisoner’s bar bumper
mounted to the front of the car.
America the beautiful,
but only if you are the pale-faced eagle.

But that too touches death, touches mourning.
So let me begin again.
I will speak only of the things unblistered joy births from:

The long grass snaking along the edge of a coiling unkempt road, pulled
with the same rush of wind as my hair is rapture.
Look at the crickets,
listen to their nightsongs weave with the katydids and coneheads.
They converse all night, never lonely, up
until 3am, right before the world settles into a hush
to await the brightly spilling popped yolk of the sun.

Life is everywhere, celebrating at the turn of darkness:
There are bursts of bats at the birthing of night, when red and pinks smear
like celestial parting fluids.

So why does happiness allude me?

I feel it building like the faint pined-for breeze that breaks
summer’s still air, heralding triumphant
from off the horizon an incoming storm.