Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Joy

“Joy is to fun what the deep sea is to a puddle. 

It’s a feeling inside that can hardly be contained.” 

― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service.  

I acted and behold, service was joy.” ― Rabindranath Tagore

Midweek Motif  ~  Joy

Wikipedia describes "joy" as "happiness" and says that: 

Happiness is a mental or emotional state of well-being defined by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy.^[1]

That definition works for me.  Then the description continues:

A variety of biological, psychological, religious and philosophical approaches have striven to define happiness and identify its sources. Various research groups, including positive psychology, are employing the scientific method to research questions about what "happiness" is, and how it might be attained.

How about that!?  

Your challenge in today's new poem is to give us an experience of joy.  Or you can "strive to define ... and identify its sources" poetically

Here are three poems to stimulate you.  

Happy New Year! 

excerpt from Joy

BY ALAN R. SHAPIRO

. . . . 

                   My lovely daughter—

walking me to the car

                                 to say goodbye   

the day I left

                      to keep watch at my brother’s

bedside—

               suddenly

                            singing “I

feel pretty, oh so

                            pretty”

                                        as she raised   

her arms up in a loose oval

                                        over her head   

and pirouetted all along the walk.

. . . .

(Read the rest HERE at the Poetry Foundation)

excerpt from The Work of Happiness

BY MAY SARTON

I thought of happiness, how it is woven

Out of the silence in the empty house each day

And how it is not sudden and it is not given

But is creation itself like the growth of a tree.

No one has seen it happen, but inside the bark

Another circle is growing in the expanding ring.

No one has heard the root go deeper in the dark,

But the tree is lifted by this inward work

And its plumes shine, and its leaves are glittering.

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE at the Poetry Foundation.)

Happy as a Dog’s Tail

BY ANNA SWIR

Happy as something unimportant   

and free as a thing unimportant.   

As something no one prizes

and which does not prize itself.   

As something mocked by all

and which mocks at their mockery.   

As laughter without serious reason.   

As a yell able to outyell itself.   

Happy as no matter what,

as any no matter what.

Happy

as a dog’s tail.

Anna Swir, “Happy as a Dog’s Tail” from Talking to My Body, translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan, Copyright © 1996. Used [by PF with] permission of Copper Canyon Press, 

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Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others 

in the spirit of the community.

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(Next week, Sumana's Midweek Motif will be Food!)