Happiness--an Ideal

But it's not.

Happiness isn't elusive after all.

I'm filled with so much emotion that I lack language. Nothing is expressed as I want it to.

And yet...yet...you bring out that rarity that was mentioned in "The Buried Life". In this instance, I can see who I really am and perhaps who you really are.

The capability of bringing this forth makes it more precious (and makes me giddy(gross)).

Rain
Shirley Steinman

I had not felt rain
that stung, or burned, or caused me pain.
My childhood dampenings
were soft and blurred
or happily pell mell with summer laughing.

I'd eagerly turned
to face rain's strident slap
as a challenge to how alive I felt.
Whooping and open-faced,
I splashed barefoot and aware.
Even that wild spring flood
meant canoe rides on the lawn.

But just now, as I knelt beside the grave,
in summer heat as warm as childhood's memory,
rain came to flail and pelt and gouge at me.
It beat and lashed and violently fought,
till, fetal-shaped, I curled and cried.
I may not ever trust a rain again.