Sometimes I'm Happy

Sometimes……

Sometimes we search
for happiness like suicidal moths
beating wings at candle flames
and pining for the moon.

Personally, I’m happy with
a well-chilled glass of chardonnay
in the summer shade of a lazy
Lloyd loom afternoon.

Or, lost in a field of seething wheat,
chided by shabby rooks,
rising raucous against
the yellow and the blue,

smeared by a palette knife
in oily flecks, black with threats
against a swirling sky
that only Vincent really knew.

Sometimes to find
brief happiness,
I walk through autumn woods
to make the most of shorter days,

where through the falling
golden leaves of ash and beech,
slanting sunbeams
cast their silver rays.

Sometimes I wonder
at the sound of distant thunder
snapping at the heels of vanished
summer gone asunder.

I love the crackle-snap of a
bonfire at the bottom of my garden,
until the chill October dusk
sends shivers down my back,

then through gathered gloom
the kitchen window beckons
to me with comfort food
and a promise to relax.

Later I watch leggy spiders
scamper round the skirting,
hunting for love while winter
waits behind the curtains.

Did you ever do the same?
I must confess that once
I longed to join the human
version of that feckless game.

Happiness is an elusive wish
in the way that KitKats
sometimes, (for a moment)
taste of fish,

or in the way that long forgotten
perfume surprises for an instant,
but looking round, there’s nothing
there but emptiness and distance.

I don’t expect or even hope
for happiness to last,
I know it’s only temporary,
it never stays for long,

so I let contentment
settle in its place and
raise a smile as I recall
some fond-remembered song.