| There’s just no accounting for happiness,or the way it turns up like a prodigal
 who comes back to the dust at your feet
 having squandered a fortune far away.
 
 And how can you not forgive?
 You make a feast in honor of what
 was lost, and take from its place the finest
 garment, which you saved for an occasion
 you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
 to know that you were not abandoned,
 that happiness saved its most extreme form
 for you alone.
 
 No, happiness is the uncle you never
 knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
 onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
 into town, and inquires at every door
 until he finds you asleep midafternoon
 as you so often are during the unmerciful
 hours of your despair.
 
 It comes to the monk in his cell.
 It comes to the woman sweeping the street
 with a birch broom, to the child
 whose mother has passed out from drink.
 It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
 a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,
 and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
 in the night.
 
 It even comes to the boulder
 in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
 to rain falling on the open sea,
 to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.
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