The Pursuit Of Happiness

All I was ever guaranteed
was a right to the pursuit
of happiness, not to
its capture.  Not one thing
has ever been sure in life —
there’s no right to see
the aurora borealis, the
emerald flash, the Grand Canyon.
Billions have died without ever seeing
these things, without knowing love,
children, freedom from want,
care, disease, war, famine and
bad weather.  Those things are mine
to face as well; I have no more right
to anything more than to be able to strive
for a chance at these things.

So when those rare moments come
of sun on my neck and a good message
from a friend, a word in the right space,
a robin refusing to move aside for my car,
a yellow tip on a daffodil spike,

I imagine myself a hunter
who will eat well tonight,
a seer thrown back into reverie
at a curtain of purple sheer before the stars,
a godly man sleeping soundly
with his family, sure of the morning.
I become a peasant who never expected
any of this, one of billions who have lived and died
since someone first scratched a bison prayer
into a rock wall, thinking of tomorrow
as if it could indeed
be different from yesterday and today;

whoever is modern cannot be more
than an ancient being
when seized by the ecstasy of a second
filled with a promise exceeded,
a pursuit completed for now
to be resumed in the seconds to follow.