Some of you may not want to know this, but I have started reading poetry while using the bathroom. Amazingly, it works well. When I've tried to read poetry books, I tend to try to read through them too fast, and don't spend the time to savor each poem. Currently, I'm reading Good Poems for Hard Times, edited by Garrison Keillor.

So anyway, here's a poem I just read that I find enjoyable and is applicable right now.

"The Happiest Day," by Linda Pastan

It was early May, I think
a moment of lilac or dogwood
when so many promises are made
it hardly matters if a few are broken.
My mother and father still hovered
in the background, part of the scenery
like the houses I had grown up in,
and if they would be torn down later
that was something I knew
but didn't believe. Our children were asleep
or playing, the youngest as new
as the new smell of the lilacs,
and how could I have guessed
their roots were shallow
and would be easily transplanted.
I didn't even guess that I was happy.
The small irritations that are like salt
on melon were what I dwelt on,
though in truth they simply
made the fruit taste sweeter.
So we sat on the porch
in the cool morning, sipping
hot coffee. Behind the news of the day--
strikes and small wars, a fire somewhere--
I could see the top of your dark head
and thought not of public conflagrations
but of how it would feel on my bare shoulder.
If someone could stop the camera then...
if someone could only stop the camera
and ask me: are you happy?
perhaps I would have noticed
how the morning shone in the reflected
color of lilac. Yes, I might have said
and offered a steaming cup of coffee.


Right now, I'm looking forward to the smell of lilacs and thinking of the lines, "I didn't even guess that I was happy. \ The small irritations that are like salt \ on melon were what I dwelt on, \ though in truth they simply \ made the fruit taste sweeter." My small irritation is forgetting to include my email address in a message I sent someone and trying not too feel too dorkish\awkward in a 7th-grade-wearing-headgear-and-thick-glasses sort of way. So, I'm trying to let this salt help my life taste this much sweeter.

ps. I added my email address to the right side bar, if for no other reason than to make sure that this salty irritation doesn't turn into salt in my wound.