“Joy is to fun what the deep sea is to a puddle.
It’s a feeling inside that can hardly be contained.”
“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I
awoke and saw that life was service.
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
. . . .
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
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 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!)
