Harboring Happiness - Day 1

Today in harboring happiness, I idle on the front porch while a finch flitters through the resident pile of leaves littering my yard. The hounds huff at her rustling between cracks in the sagging, sunbaked fence. I wonder if she is nesting or scavenging for rootless seeds. Yet, happiness imagines she is playing hopscotch instead, as if even birds understand these silly little things need time and a place to exist.

Driving to meet other hounds who will wait for me, tails wagging, through cracks in venetian blinds, I discover vultures sunbathing on top of light poles, wings spread as if eager for a tender embrace. I am teleported skyward, balancing on one foot like a heron amidst the shallows, stretching my arms so that my fingertips barely brush against primary feathers before I fall. I wonder if the sun ever gets lonely. While descending back to reality, happiness and I blow her a kiss just in case.

Trodding through the shady field with friends who know me by the sound of my car door closing and the shape of my knees, they become ornithologists who will try their best not to chase our subjects. Today, the mockingbird reminds a curious grackle which tree is his and neighborly escorts the juvenile back home. Happiness says the woodpecker clanging on a nearby finial is their version of morning radio.

Afternoon, I wiggle a feathered string for a stranger’s cat while they get married. In harboring happiness, I will save some for them and remember how silly little exchanges like awkward first dates and sharing playlists can become something as important as forever.

Home again, the finch is exploring another yard, someone else’s muse. The brothers are posted at the window upstairs where they can watch the world from above like the basking vultures or the sun, who is crawling now beneath her quilt of clouds.

Tonight, I will build a nest of pillows where happiness can rest. I will whisper silly little questions to it like “What kind of bird would you want to be?” or “Do you think plants have feelings?” It will fall asleep without answering. In harboring happiness, I can only hope it stays in the morning as if an avoidant lover finally sick of shallow waters.