Michael Van Walleghen: "Happiness"

Weep for what little things could make them glad.
—Robert Frost, "Directive"


Melvin,
     the large collie
who lives in the red house
at the end of my daily run
is happy,
     happy to see me
even now,
     in February—
a month of low skies
and slowly melting snow.

His yard
     has turned almost
entirely to mud—

          but so what?

Today,
     as if to please me,
he has torn apart
          and scattered
everywhere
     a yellow plastic bucket
the color of forsythia
or daffodils . . .

          And now,
in a transport
          of cross-eyed
muddy ecstasy,
          he has placed
his filthy two front paws
together
     on the top pipe
of his sagging cyclone fence—

drooling a little,
          his tail
wagging furiously,
          until finally,
as if I were God's angel himself—

fulgent,
     blinding,
          aflame
with news of the Resurrection,
I give him a biscuit
          instead.

Which is fine with Melvin—
who is wise,
     by whole epochs
of evolution,
     beyond his years.

Take
     what you can get,
that's his motto . . .

          And really,
apropos of bliss,
          happiness
and the true rapture,
          what saint
could tell us half as much?

Even as he drops
          back down
into the cold
          dog-shit muck
he'll have to live in
          every day
for weeks on end perhaps
unless it freezes . . .

whining now,
      dancing
nervously
     as I turn away
again,
     to leave him there

the same today
          as yesterday—

one of the truly wretched
of this earth
     whose happiness
is almost more
          than I can bear.

"Happiness" by Michael Van Walleghen, from In the Black Window: New and Selected Poems. © University of Illinois Press, 2004.

Photography credit: "Collie at Winter Time," by unknown photographer, found at this link (originally color).