Noticing happiness in poems

It is national poetry month so yesterday a group of faculty read poetry to each other: some poems written by the reader and some not.  These were not poems about happiness.  Indeed some had topics quite the opposite: sorrow, guilt, or mourning.  Nonetheless, the act of gathering to read and then reading did generate a sort of joy in the shared appreciation for the beauty of the words.

"My apologies to happiness for taking you as my due."

This line from "Under One Star" by Wislawa Szymborska was perhaps the only direct reference to happiness and it is in passing.  I'm noticing this.  Happiness often appears in poems in passing.  It is noticed rather than examined.  This morning I read another poem (Another Insane Devotion by Gerald Stern) in which happiness appear as a single word sentence drawing upon the three details that precede it.

"[...]I think I gave the cat

half of my sandwich to buy my life, I think

I broke it in half as a decent sacrifice.

It was this I bought, the red coleus,

the split rocking chair, the silk lampshade.

Happiness. I watched him with pleasure.

I bought memory. I could have lost it."

Without dismissing the value of careful analysis and reflection, I'm inclined to agree with these poets and their example of noticing happiness.