Happiness Home-Grown

I tried buying it
But my bid was not high enough
I looked in the January sales
But they had not ordered enough
So I’ll have to make my own:
Happiness home-grown

I tried finding it in other people
But that just halved their own
I tried holding onto it
In the hope that it would not go

I sifted through the sand on shores
In case it had been washed up
I thought mistakenly it could equate to love
But happiness was harder to find there
Without some kind of pain following its every move

I tried to fix it to a place
So that it might last
But I couldn’t stay where I had built it
So it stayed in those four walls
That confined it to the past

I hungered night and day;
I tried to forget it so it could find me while I was not looking
That’s when it happens they say
But its possibility remained in every step of my way
So I picked up moss green rocks
I felt underneath and found nothing but slugs
I looked beneath a bridge to look for signs
That it lived in the muddy water with the fishes
But no bubbles broke the surface
No ripples of laughter were there
Just pennies falling full of wishes
Empty of hope in asking for what is missing
I knew then that happiness was elsewhere

As the night lands in my eyes
And I walk down cobbles at the riverside
I wonder if it is like a boat already set off
One I didn’t catch or one that never stopped

It could be in another job or another land
I’d know it if I had it; I have held it in my hands
I tried holding on with both
But it had to go
I tried finding it in other people
But that just halved their own