The Artwork: Dying Poppies
This poem first appeared in Vol 3., Issue 1 of the digital lit mag, “Instant Noodles.”
The Poem: Happiness
Happiness isn’t given to you
like a watch’s flowering hell*
it can’t be mined, like
some quickly degrading treasure,
its worth worth millions of
unbeating hearts.
It’s more like a near-fallow field
you finally decide
to toil in.
Every day,
a turning, a churning, a planting.
Emptiness greets you each morning,
sometimes you curse it, and piss on the dirt.
But you return all the same
a weeding, a feeding, a cleaning.
Finally, dicots, two by two by two,
cover everything like a green mist.
Now the real work begins,
caring for this unfolding flora of love
atop stems of heartache.
Moments of sublime beauty, fully born.
Then petals peel away, and
bodies harden into straw
crumbling into the dirt.
A brief wonder
Gone to become
a glorious memory.
Mourn it not forever,
the flowers will come again,
if you also return.
*From Julio Cortázar’s “Preámbulo a las instrucciones para dar cuerda al reloj”