Fragile Happiness Poem by Suzanne Hayasaki

How fragile happiness is.
Sitting sturdily on its perch
Until some ill wind
Stills its song.

How unpredictability it takes wing.
Leaving behind my proffered seed.
Taking off for some other tree
In the yard of some soul
Whose winds have shifted
To tempt the flitting figure from the sky
With promises of riper fruit.

How helpless I feel
As I watch its fickle flight,
Knowing the security
I felt in its fidelity
Was a form of hubris
Brought on by my own self-delusion.

So what now?
I muse into the silence
Unaccompanied by birdsong,
My thoughts unleavened with optimism,
Alone, again, with my cynicism.

How many gray days must pass
Until some fellow creature
Sneaks into my garden
And frolics on my lawn,

Drawing me out of myself
And into the universe
Where my lifetime
Is a single flash of a firefly's tail

Reminding me that nothing
Is as illusory as true peace
And sending me scurrying
In search of my own hope

Knowing that like attracts like
And I must be the light I seek.