Happiness: A Poem

The movies that really
hit the spot have ironic,
downbeat, equivocal endings.

Happiness’s grand illusion
is always just out of reach:
Garance dwindles into the crowd;

Rick turns from the Lisbon plane;
Kane discards his tarnished star;
Moseby adrift on Point of View.

Happiness seems a habit
some gain early, some never.
(Yet we cling to the thing with wings.)

A matter of collision:
the right place, right time. Or not.
It’s no potato you can grow.

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