Sunday, July 11, 2021

Rita Dove and happiness

This morning while on a walk I smelled so deeply of a mimosa flower that the whimsical petal strands tickled the inside of my nose. I saw half a dozen bumblebees stumble clumsily through those same flowers, their big, bouncy bodies tumbling headfirst into feathery pink bliss.

I ate a dozen wild blackberries warm straight from the blackberry bush. Darting blue birds (not bluebirds, perhaps blue buntings?) flashed brilliant in energetic bursts. The crows convening on the sidewalk parted to let me pass, but not without significant vocal commentary. 

There was plenty more, of course: the crayon-box variety of wild flowers; the rise-and-fall, buzz-and-hum symphony of insects; the miracle of a star 92 million miles away warming my bare arms; the “weeds” whose resilience and ingenuity found a way to thrive in a sidewalk crack; my own body strong and capable of walking small hills on a Tennessee July morning. 

See, I KNOW there is every good reason to be grateful and see beauty in this world. And I AM grateful. And I DO see. But I also struggle with a sporadic darkness that can grip so fiercely it makes existence feel excruciating. And though this is my truth, it makes me feel silly and dramatic, so I keep quiet about it for the most part. Lately, I am existing in a place much brighter than I thought possible these past few years. In fact, there was a time when the following Rita Dove poem spoke clearly to the limits of my hopefulness. I am surprised by a new hope (though still tremulous, still cautious) that can imagine happiness as deep, full and complete.


“Sonnet” by Rita Dove


Nothing can console me. You may bring silk

to make skin sigh, dispense yellow roses

in the manner of ripened dignitaries.

You can tell me repeatedly 

I am unbearable (and I know this):

still, nothing turns the gold to corn,

nothing is sweet to the truth crushing in.


I’ll not ask for the impossible;

one learns to walk by walking.

In time I’ll forget this empty brimming,

I may laugh again at

a bird, perhaps, chucking the nest – 

but it will not be happiness

for I have known that.


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