Say 'hasta' to January and read this poem

I was sitting here thinking about the last month, and some of the strange, sweet, and bitter things that have happened. And then I thought about newness (I usually love January for this very notion), and decided that this January didn't really count. So, bring on February, full of love, family, fun, frolicking, friends . . . . and then I somehow thought of this poem, which happens to be one of my top 10, if not top 5, if not the all-great #1? (I could NEVER narrow it down that far.) When I heard Robert Hass himself read this at the Westminster College Poetry Series, I was so HAPPY, too!

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 café
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 the faint idea of order,
I wrote: happiness! It is December, very cold,
we woke early this morning,
and lay in bed kissing,
our eyes squinched up like bats.

--Robert Hass