901. So Much Happiness - Naomi Shihab Nye

.
It is difficult to know what to do
with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something
to rub against,
A wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you,
you have pieces to pick up,
Something to hold in your hands,
like ticket stubs or change.
But happiness floats.
It doesn’t need you to hold it down.
It doesn’t need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof
of the next house, singing,
And disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived
in a peaceful tree house
And now live over a quarry of noise and dust
Cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
It too could wake up filled with possibilities
Of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
And love even the floor
which needs to be swept,
The soiled linens and scratched records…..
Since there is no place large enough
To contain so much happiness,
You shrug, you raise your hands,
and it flows out of you
Into everything you touch.
You are not
responsible.
You take no credit,
as the night sky
takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it,
and to share it,
And in that way, be known.