Little Things

You said to me once, “All little things are
Happy.” Could we have been looking toward
The paddocks and the animals you kept?
Or were we watching your playing children,
Youngsters then? Whatever the occasion,
Your remark and its truth return to me,
Watching this tiny bird ducking in and
Out of the dish there, sending bright splashing water
Into the air in what must be unthought delight
Or simple instinct of self-care – no reflection
Involved but my own, that the purely physical
Must be the purely joyful – or is it that
Neither of these has existence, and that to be
Fully in the world is to have no sense of being
Nor of happiness? But the distinction
Is meaningless, for the bird I saw – gone now,
Like your children then – is a form of,
Participant within, the original and originating
Joy and gift of being, where these are one,
A single fact, needing no – indeed resistant of –
Explanation, but resting in a place inseparable
From experience, in a sense of life and our own
Living, that brings the thinking, remembering,
Perceiving adult wholly into the gift that is
Neither bird nor child but whole small world.

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