So Much Happiness by Naomi Shihab Nye

So Much Happiness

by Naomi Shihab Nye

It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.

With sadness there is something to rub against,


a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.


When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,


something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.

But happiness floats.


It doesn’t need you to hold it down.


It doesn’t need anything.


Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,


and disappears when it wants to.


You are happy either way.


Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house


and now live over a quarry of noise and dust


cannot make you unhappy.


Everything has a life of its own,


it too could wake up filled with possibilities


of coffee cake and ripe peaches,


and love even the floor which needs to be swept,


the soiled linens and scratched records . . .

Since there is no place large enough


to contain so much happiness,


you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you


into everything you touch. You are not responsible.


You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit


for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,


and in that way, be known.

I promised a lighter poem than the one I posted on Sunday, and I think this poem is the epitome of light (as in joyful, not superficial). It is in Naomi Shihab Nye's 1995 collection, Words Under the Words: Selected Poems, published by Far Corner Books. You can also find it here on the Academy of American Poets web site.

I love that the first stanza compares being incredibly happy to sadness, pointing out we dont know what to do with "so much happiness" whereas sadness has a path, "a wound to tend." It is a beautiful way to start this poem.

The second stanza provides wonderful scenarios: happiness floating and landing on a neighbor's house; not caring that a current house is not as nice as the previous one; even housework. Nye often gets food into her poems. Here, it is "coffee cake and fresh peaches," which sounds quite lovely--definitely happy foods.

The second person has been used throughout the poem, and in the last stanza, "you" becomes more active. Literally:

you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you

Happiness continues to move, but now we as readers are moving with it, because of it.

The poem ends with a strong simile. Spreading happiness just happens, as

the night sky takes no credit


for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,


and in that way, be known.

It is such a beautiful ending and is evidence for something we all probably know--being happy and sharing that joy becomes a trait any of us can become known for and what an

incredible thing to be known for.

Naomi Shihab Nye writes nonfiction and fiction as well as poetry. She has also edited. I've seen her read twice, and the stories and anecdotes she told in between poems were as wonderful as her poetry (if you have the opportunity to attend a reading by Nye, take it!). You can read more about her here. BOA published her most recent book, Sidekick, in 2026; it is a collection of poems.