I look out on a day so beautiful my teeth ache, which might also be the result of the clenching of my jaw at Bush's determination to drill off-shore, to open up the outer continental shelf, or the "O.C.S." as he calls it.
I thought of not mentioning it, and then, realized that it is becoming more and more clear that the environment is "the issue" if we are all planning to leave a planet for future generations of humans.
Drilling off-shore will not solve the problem of the price of gas. Why then propose it? I wonder sometimes if Bush is determined to go down in history as the absolute worst president in every category imaginable. It is an achievement, I suppose, to be the absolute worst, and, of course, he thinks he is going to be lifted right up to heaven, though I think we are doing enough damage to the environment that even heaven might be either wet or on fire.
It is frightening to read in National Geographic this month of the fire danger in the West.
So, well, trying to move on into my day, I offer Jane Kenyon's poem "Happiness."
Happiness
` Jane Kenyon
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 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 lovely broom, to the child
whose mother had passed out from the drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basket maker,
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.
It is time to hammer into Bush's head that he has no power and that he is not going to destroy even more than he already has the environment that we all know is necessary to nourish soul.