Happiness

Like drinking water from a creek
in your cupped hands
Lap it up before it leaks
Out between your fingers

Splash it in your face
catching the drops
that run off the end of your nose
on the tip of your tongue

Drops evaporate
and hands must be dipped again
to wet a dry throat
and wipe the sweat away

Then one day you come
sliding down the gravel bank
sitting on your rock
under the hemlock

And the creek is dry
sand on the parched bed
dappled with the pools
of summer's last flow

And the water
runs underground
to be tapped lower down.
It will fill again.

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