HAPPINESS


After a week of false starts, afternoons that flew by like swifts and swallows
after gnats, living with difficult strangers, I’m walking down the path at night,
no light but the faint cold fire of the stars.  Finally, some new work done,
and maybe not half bad.  Though I’m thankful for some time alone,
I’m missing my other life, with all its complications. And then, I realize,
I’m happy.  The only sound is the cows, chewing their way
across the meadow,  their occasional contralto moos. And the herd
of stars overhead hums its own strange song, too low for human ears.

first published in Bhutan Today



LE TEMPS PERDU


I’m sitting here in this green glade, trying to write, at a wrought iron table
patterned with roses, but I’m empty of words, a dictionary of blank
pages, a pen out of ink.  Sunlight is filtering through a thousand
tiny leaves, seeping down to the grass and ivy, like sitting
in a cup of green tea.  All I can do is burble mindlessly,
like the house wrens and robins, haunted by the ghosts
of what I’ve written here, other times.  I’m sure
the Chinese philosophers have a name for this, revisiting a place
of former happiness that you can never recapture.  The cardinal
keeps singing  compare, don’t compare, and a squirrel runs up the path,
cracks a nut in his sharp little teeth.   Something wonderful is just about to happen.

​first published in Bhutan Today, then in Small Rain (Purple Flag Press, 2014)