On Happiness
- On Happiness
To see a flash of silver— pale undersides of the maple leaves catching light—quick movement at the edge of thought, is to be pulled back to that morning, to the river where it flashes still: a single fish breaking the water’s surface, the almost-caught taunting our lines until we give up, at last, and turn the boat toward home; is to see it clearly: the salmon rolling, showing me a glimpse of the unattainable—happiness I would give my father if I could; and then, is to recall the permit he paid for that morning, see it creased in my back pocket, how he’d handed it to me and I’d tucked it there, as if a guarantee. [End Page 120]
Natasha Trethewey is the author of Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and three collections of poetry. Her most recent, Native Guard, won the Pulitzer Prize. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, among others, and teaches at Emory University. Her new book, Thrall, the title poem of which appeared in Ecotone last year, is forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2012.
