Happiness Because yesterday morning from the steamy window we saw a pair of red foxes across the creek eating the last windfall apples in the rain - they looked up at us with their green eyes long enough to symbolize the wakefulness of living things and then went back to eating - and because this morning when she went into the gazebo with her black pen and yellow pad to coax an inquisitive soul from what she thinks of as the reluctance of matter, I drove into town to drink tea in the cafe and write notes in a journal -mist rose from the bay like the luminous and indefinite aspect of intention, and a small flock of tundra swans for the second winter in a row was feeding on new grass in the soaked fields; they symbolize mystery, I suppose, they are also called whistling swans, are very white, and their eyes are black - and because the tea steamed in front of me, and the notebook, turned to a new page, was blank except for a faint blue idea of order, (Continues...) Excerpted from Sun Under Wood by Robert Hass Copyright © 2003 by Robert Hass Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
