✨ Happy Ideas

Two blue velvet shoes...

Happy Ideas

I had the happy idea to fasten a bicycle wheel
to a kitchen stool and watch it turn.

                                        —DUCHAMP

I had the happy idea to suspend some blue globes in the air
and watch them pop.

I had the happy idea to put my little copper horse on the shelf so we could
     stare at each other
all evening.

I had the happy idea to create a void in myself.
Then to call it natural.

Then to call it supernatural.

I had the happy idea to wrap a blue scarf around my head and spin.
I had the happy idea that somewhere a child was being born who was
     nothing like Helen or
Jesus except in the sense of changing everything.

I had the happy idea that someday I would find both pleasure and punishment,
     that I would
know them and feel them,
and that, until I did, it would be almost as good to pretend.

I had the happy idea to call myself happy.

I had the happy idea that the dog digging a hole in the yard in the twilight
     had his nose deep in
mold-life.

I had the happy idea that what I do not understand is more real than what I do,
and then the happier idea to buckle myself
into two blue velvet shoes.

I had the happy idea to polish the reflecting glass and say
hello to my own blue soul. Hello, blue soul. Hello.

It was my happiest idea.

—Mary Szybist

Come write with us via the Happy Ideas Prompt Series!

From Incarnadine, Graywolf Press; Copyright © 2013. Used by permission of The Permissions Company, LLC. Photo by Jonathan Daniels, Creative Commons, via Unsplash.