Happiness

An art, not a right, happiness,

according to the Dalai Lama

(David reads aloud to me)

is not as elused

as one might think, but clozer

and grisp. I wonder

if his screwing up

how words are said

is prologue

to a deeper detour in the neuronal relays . . .

or is it faulty eyesight

as he speeds over the lines

of small print?

Now he looks out the window

at a steady drizzle.

He smiles and calls it

“the seep and slur of rain.”

Not bad, I think,

that choice of words

in an iambic

collusion with his perfect

delight. He enjoys

how he punches out

the stressed syllables

as he returns to reading—

a measure of personal

happiness—happiness

our purpose in life,

not selfish as one might suppose,

although the wish to avoid

unhappiness

may be—and I remember

a friend’s sad report:

“He put his urine-soaked

underpants on my face

one night as I slept.”

She told me this serenely,

as if the experience

she had with her husband’s

dementia would be mine, there was

no stopping it. I said nothing,

only fixed my mind

on the remembered smell

of David’s skin—something like

saffron married to a whiff of ripe

pears and worn-out

cotton undershirts. Blindfolded,

I could distinguish David

and find him in a crowd of men,

were I allowed to snuffle

each man’s neck and smell

the difference—

and that thought gave me

happiness

as unexpected as was the glimpse of the road

that moved beneath us

as we sped home on a morning

long ago, after

a night of reading each other’s

poems aloud, every

blessed one of them,

the road beneath us seen through the rotting-out

porous floor

of the old jeep—

we travelled at the speed of light,

and nothing, nothing

could slow us down

or keep us

separate from each other

or the road, wherever it took us.