Adrienne Rich — In the Woods

"Difficult ordinary happiness," no one nowadays believes in you. I shift, full-length on the blanket, to fix the sun precisely behind the pine-tree's crest so light spreads through the needles alive as water just where a snake has surfaced, unreal as water in green crystal. Bad news is always arriving. "We're hiders, hiding from something bad," sings the little boy. Writing these words in the woods, I feel like a traitor to my friends, even to my enemies. The common lot's to die a stranger's death and lie rouged in the coffin, in a dress chosen by the funeral director. Perhaps that's why we never see clocks on public buildings any more. A fact no architect will mention. We're hiders, hiding from something bad most of the time. Yet, and outrageously, something good finds us, found me this morning lying on a dusty blanket among the burnt-out Indian pipes and bursting-open lady's-slippers. My soul, my helicopter, whirred distantly, by habit, over the old pond with the half-drowned boat toward which it always veers for consolation: ego's Arcady: leaving the body stuck like a leaf against a screen.-- Happiness! how many times I've stranded on that word, at the edge of that pond; seen as if through tears, the dragon-fly-- only to find it all going differently for once this time: my soul wheeled back and burst into my body. Found! Ready or not. If I move now, the sun naked between the trees will melt me as I lie.