Happiness

Tracing the crack in the  cold window
my fingers momentarily make a hand.
The hand weaves between
head and heart, touching autumn glass,
making me whole, a human being
wrapped in the litter and echo
the world wears when receiving us.

So the shadow is cast out of the house,
my shoulders stretching deep across
the wide yard riddled
with spasms of rain. Sense and self
clatter like guttered cans, gathered
only by my absent mechanical grasping.

The crack feathers the window,
slender with that shape of reach--
vein and branch and root stretch--
revealing no secrets to nested fingers.
I am happy even when happiness is absent,
touching the whispered shape of nothing.