The simple things in life

I don't know if this is true for everyone, but there are certain moments in life when I experience pure happiness.  Not apropos of anything, it just is suddenly upon me.  There are not that many instances of it occurring.  Of course, everyone experiences happiness at certain occasions or while spending time with people they love, but usually even then at the back of your mind your to-do list is still there, your worries and anxieties are not that far behind.  When pure happiness hits, you know it because it's all you feel.  It's just plain joy at being alive.

I can remember one time when I was in college bringing back some lunch to my dorm.  I was carrying my drink and a sandwich and I was walking across the grass to the back door of the building.  I went to fish my keys out of my bag and it hit me.  I don't know why.  Nothing around me triggered it.  Just for a minute, everything seemed well and good in the world and I was happy.  It makes me think of that Florence + the Machine lyric:  "Happiness hit her like a bullet in the head/Struck from a great height by someone who should have known better."

Well, it's been many years since that incident, but the same thing happened to me today.  I was in the kitchen this morning.  I was standing there barefoot and in a pair of shorts I sleep in.  The window was cracked open so that a breeze was entering with the sunlight and hitting my bare legs.  It was somewhere around 75 degrees.  I was eating an apple I'd cut into slices.  I spread peanut butter on them.  It was quiet except for the cawing of a lone crow somewhere outside.  The strangest thing was that the linoleum of the kitchen floor felt so good against my feet.  It made no sense, but I was happy.

Eating Poetry

-Mark Strand

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.

The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.

She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.

I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark.
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.