Happiness Is a Shadow

Happiness is a shadow cast upon the moment as a bird’s upon the forest floor fleeting glimpsed in motion upon a fern or fallen tree too swift or dim perhaps if the light is frail to discern what creature might have inspired such a sudden darkening of green so we gaze through the canopy in search of a color or some distinctive curve in flight to guide us to a definition of that barely sensed so we can claim such was the true shape of joy responsible for the pattern upon the moss and browning leaves not conjured by evening’s saturated glow drifting through foliage set in motion by the breeze but a thing possessed of eye and pinion and grace we imagine though the shadow is long since lost and clarity restored