Drawing by Susan C. Price
Happiness
By Eric Meub
Happiness
By Eric Meub
Nothing’s been more fiercely sought, yet less
Accomplished in my life than happiness.
How can a quality that seems so clear
Take longer than a lifetime to appear?
A mystic or an optimist would claim
That my imagination is to blame,
But years of focus on the least defect
Have proved that kind of theory incorrect.
I can, say, measure distances in eight
Dimensions, but I still can’t see them straight:
Although the length, mathematically, is real,
My inner eye has nothing to reveal.
If I can get that right, while driving blind,
What makes the obvious so hard to find?
Why can’t the happiest hour I ever knew
Just get extended for a year or two?
That one Thanksgiving and the calculus
Of tide pools, tenure, and the two of us:
I close my eyes and hear the waters seethe
Around me, taste the salt air as I breathe.
| Copyright © 2020 by Susan C. Price & Eric Meub Eric Meub, architect, lives and practices in Pasadena, the adopted brother of the artist, Susan C. Price. They respect, in their different ways, the line. |
What a devious mystery this revelry wrings. That happy Thanksgiving hour – with another academic? a mathematician? – nothing came of it? And how does her focus on defects prove...prove what? – that her imagination isn’t at fault, or simply that theories attributing failure to her imagination are wrong? Yet, still, though she has “fiercely sought” happiness, why has it eluded her? Why not only can she not find it, but also not figure out why? Has she tied her mind in knots, in schemes of arguments and proofs? Has she fettered herself, and put a fold over her eyes?
ReplyDeleteOh my. How utterly fine. How gossamer-soft the complaint, barely a whimper dignifying the heart-shattering failure of the quest. Which quest, surely, must be the goal of every human who ever lived or ever will, the Holy Grail of happiness! Yet the expression on the face of Susan's exquisite drawing is, I have on good authority (Cindy of course), not one of despair but of pleasure! Could it be that the quest is the goal, that happiness is not a finish-line to be crossed but a process of enjoying life as it happens? And once again Eric, bravo. I like reading your poems aloud, getting the cadence just right so the emphasis matches what I think your intention was. Gads, man, it is so good to have a new poem from you! Thanks so much.
ReplyDeleteI think Douglas Adams said that to wish only to be happy is like specifying of a machine only that it run noiselessly.
ReplyDeleteI have only just now been able to catch up with this. Oh, the comments are so kind. Really made my morning. Thank you, Morris!
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