If Happiness Means

If happiness means
letting what’s here be here.
If happiness can be
contentment with what’s passing through,
(contentment worked and determined),
then letting sadness flow,
I can be happy.
Letting frustration pass through,
I can still be happy.

If happiness means
living in ways
(I’ve finally learned)
that make me happy,
If it means
choosing behaviors that make me happy
then yes yes,
I am happy.

If happiness means
learning what actions do not
bring me happiness.
and mostly,
learning to unchoose them,
if happiness means
that kind of wisdom—
nothing philosophical, really;
self-knowledge, really—
if happiness means that,
then I am learning
how to make my happiness.

To craft it carefully
with walking or forebearing,
with crying or swimming,
to make it like a daily cake or poem
with my own hands.
If happiness means
to study myself and see
what is it that does
make me happy,

then to bring it, to deliver
happiness like a newborn thing
each new laboring day,
if happiness means
not waiting for it
from outside me,
because it’s in my body,
only mine,
then yes, oh yes, I am learning
how to be happy.

©Susa Silvermarie 2022