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Posts Tagged ‘gratitude’

Sometimes for no reason
a sweetness comes. A pink scent,
perhaps, just beyond a fence,

or the particular way that a friend
says your name. It never lasts,
and it usually passes too quickly to name,

but for that moment the body opens
to meet whatever the sweetness is—
the way the low light moves across

the field or the fragrance of rain—
and though nothing changes,
the world is a much different place.

Imagine we could constellate our lives
on these points of sweetness—
such a different kind of mapping

that would be—a life not told
in highs and lows but in the subtler
tones—the times we turned our heads

or breathed in more fully, or closed
our eyes so we might better notice
a taste. The times our hearts skip

a beat, like tiny silent thank you notes.

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IMG_1720

Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
—G.K. Chesterton

Standing in the field of golden blooms
it is easy to feel happiness. So bright,
after all, and such an abundance! Oh yellow!

Yellow all nodding and splayed! And then, well, happy
of course, because it is not my yard, and dandelions
are undeniably weeds. You know, the rubbery leaves.

The way they squeak underfoot when you walk.
The way that after a week or two they turn into gray seed
and proliferate successfully, as weeds do. It’s harder then,

once all the white wishes are spent and the hollow
stems stand naked and dull, harder to believe
that the pilgrims brought them to this land on purpose.

So many things are just this way—vibrant
for such a short season. But don’t fast forward. Admire
how they grow almost everywhere, from the Arctic Circle

to sub-Antarctica. That alone is cause for wonder.
Today, couple wonder with gold, miles and miles
of golden sway, and that, my friends,

makes for this curious tide of gratitude that rises
out of who knows where in the body and makes us want
to run out into the field and become the field

and wade in the gold and weave ourselves into the current.
Who could believe in a clock? Who could believe
there is anything to do in this moment but meet it and play?

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The world exists just fine without
our appreciation. It is not for us
that the dandelions bloom in tides of yellow

across the valley floor. It is not for us
that the elk stream in a slow brown current
before they disappear into the Englemann spruce.

And then there are the tiny empires
of grasshoppers, ants and bees—
and the underground realms of prairie dogs

and worms and rhizomes and moles—
so much of the world we never see.
And still, this drive toward gratitude.

Still this tug to pull over the car and step out,
this impulse to offer the world my attention.
As if being very still were as vital to

the moment as the scurry and swerve,
scamper and stride. As perhaps it is.

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Thank you for this day made
of wind and rain and sun and the scent
of old-fashioned lilacs. Thank you

for the pond and the slippery tadpole
and the wild iris that opened beside the pond
last week, so pale, so nearly purple,

their stems already flagged and bent.
Thank you for the yellow morels hiding in the field grass,
the ones we can only see when we are already

on our knees. And thank you for the humming
that rises out of the morning as if mornings
are simply reasons to hum. What a gift,

this being alive, this chance to encounter the world.
What a gift, this being a witness to spring—
spring in everything. Spring in the way

that we greet each other. Spring in the way the golden eagle
takes to the thermals and spirals up to where
we can barely see the great span of its wings.

Spring in the words we have known
since our births. Like glory. Like celebrate.
like flowering. What is it in us that longs to unfurl,

to expand, to open up and leap out—
something feral, unnamable, something
so fierce it can push through the crust of the soil,

something so vulnerable it can freeze and overnight
disappear. Thank you for this return to exactly
where we are, this greening, this bright roar

of the river rising, this swooping
of swallows, this leafing of lettuce,
this now, this yes, this here.

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Again, Choosing

Each shrill, whining, or whooshing song is a call to the endless nature of love.
—David Rothenberg,
Bug Music

Sometimes the only thing we need
to do is step slightly to the side
of the self. It is easier then

to see how beauty surrounds us,
how we ourselves contribute
to all this beauty.

By what odd trickery
do we forget to say thank you
in every moment?

We are not like the Magicicada
that must wait seventeen years
before our time to sing.

In this very instant we could emerge
and choose gratitude—
one way is to be wholly resonant,

to add our voice
to the one great music.
The other way is to listen.

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Look Around

illustration by Leanne Canty

illustration by Leanne Canty

Look Around

‘Opportunity’ comes from the Latin porta, which is an ‘entrance’ or ‘passage through.’ The word is associated with doors and entranceways and an oppourtunus then, is what offers an opening, or what stands before an opening, ready to go through.
—Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes this World

A crumb is an opportunity
for an ant. Strong wind is an opportunity
for the albatross to soar. An apple, ripe

and wholly red, is an opportunity to share.
For the aardvark surrounded by termites,
opportunities are everywhere.

The rain, to the agave, is an opportunity
to blossom. To Cleopatra, the venom of the asp
was an opportunity to die.

In golden autumn, aspen leaves are an opportunity
to get lost. An acorn is an opportunity for future shade.
A queen of hearts is an opportunity for an ace of spades.

There are always opportunities to listen. An enemy
is an opportunity for antlers to do what antlers do.
The temperature of a nest is an opportunity for an alligator egg

to be an alligator boy or an alligator girl. The artichoke
is an opportunity for the thistle to be valued.
The vast Atlantic Ocean is an opportunity to be alone.

What is not an opportunity for gratitude? A zillion zillion
blessings wait in every moment, portals for awe,
passages to astonishment, one way tickets with your name on them.

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My favorite part of the day today
was the part when you looked at me
across the silvery breakfast table
and said, Look how bright
it is outside, and you knew
and I knew what that meant,
and we both knew that no one
else would know, and the smile
then that we shared was one
so only between we two that it
made my heart leap out of synch—
it was the kind of moment
one might blink through.

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Notice, says the docent,
how the slash of flesh
creates a diagonal across the canvas.

This creates movement,
he explains, makes the painting
dynamic, more alive.

The slash is Jesus. His naked body
is clearly not alive. His blood
has stilled inside the pale skin.

The people around him
wear the pink stain of anguish,
behind them the sky skews toward black.

After forty four years,
I have never seen a dead body
unaltered by a mortician.

This is a fact aided by luck,
a small family, and a national obsession
with pushing death away.

Every hour, 6,319 people die.
Every minute, 105. Every second,
1.8. Excluding natural disasters.

Though it would be more polite
to say that 1.8 people passed.
Or 1.8 people breathed their last.

Or that 1.8 people departed.
Though since you started to read
this poem, over 60 people have

died, no matter what we call it.
All this perhaps explains why today
I noticed so many things

on the diagonal. The mountains,
of course. The sloping bangs
on the face of the girl. The tilt

of your voice as you greeted me.
The wine as it agreed with the angle
of the tipping glass. I noticed them because

I only this week learned have learned to notice the angle
of things, and perhaps because I am learning, too,
to notice the false guarantees.

On days such as these, I wake
and think, my god, what a gift to wake up,
what a windfall, this cold floor,

this dark of the morning
before the sun leans through the dark
to slant its faraway light into our room.

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After the last dishes are done
and before we start the next thing to do,
this is a favorite time with you,
when we are almost lost in the house,
a bit purposeless. Our bellies satisfied,
our children asleep. That is when
we might sit side by side
on the couch, and curl into each other.
We don’t have to say anything at all.
Every breath is a bridge.
I feel you crossing over.
Such a subtle perfume, but there
it is, the scent of gratitude.

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It wasn’t today.
The plane took off.
Flew. Landed.

My brother arrived.
He drove us
through eight lanes of traffic

to a beautiful home
where it was so easy
to hug, to laugh,

to eat, to remember,
to relax, to not even
think that it

might have gone
another way, so easy
to smile, to give thanks.

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Tsuyu no yo wa tsuyu no yo nagara sari nagara

The world of dew —
A world of dew it is indeed,
And yet, and yet . . .
—Issa

Thank you for this world of dew,
for dew enough to fill a cup,
to fill my small cup to brimming,

though some mornings all the dew’s been spilled.
It matters not the hand that spilled it,
though there is a tug toward blame.

In the story, the Hindu master pours the cup
too full, and when the tea begins to spill
the scientists appeal to him in shock.

You are too full, he says to them.
Come back to me when you are empty.
Then we’ll talk.

World, thank you for emptying me.
And thank you for my cup, for this
fragile cup with it’s long thin cracks.

Thank you for my thirst,
this thirst so deep sometimes
I beg for one more sip.

And thank you for these lips
that beg, thank you for the empty cup,
and thank you for the sometimes dew.

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Columbus

Beside the highway,
magnolias bloom.
Mile after mile of pink
and white cups catching light,
and beneath each tree
a trail of fallen
pink and white petals,
as if the world
is preparing a wedding aisle
for anyone who shows up
this April day in Ohio.
At an intersection,
the young man
in the old blue Ford
twists his face and
scowls at our car.
There has been
no infraction, but
he throws up his hand
in what, disgust?
before his friend,
the driver, peels off.
Though he’s made it
into this poem,
it’s more from curiosity
than injury.
It is easy to not
take to heart his curled lip, his sneer.
But these petals,
these miles and miles
of trees alight
I take them very personally.

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every day the right day
to smell the lily as if
never again

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The day after I die,
I wake up a little late.
The sun is already
thick in the air—see it
glitter, all that dust I didn’t dust
before I died. I do not
dust it this day, either.
Nor do I worry
that I have not dusted.
I notice I have hands.
They are heavy
on my belly, my chest.
I rise. There is no
special exuberance
in the rising, though
it is a miracle. All day
I marvel. It is very quiet,
this grace. I saw myself
leaving these rooms,
this place. Yet death
came and went and
there is breakfast
to make and a job
to do and a hum
to be hummed by and later
this night when
my daughter comes
to me in her silky
pink Dora pajamas and
lifts up her arms,
she says into my neck,
I wish that my room
was farther away
because I like it when
you carry me and I
can pretend I
am asleep in your arms.
She pretends she is
asleep all the short way
to her bed, but when
I lay her there, she begins
to laugh and kick. Is this
what I have been doing
all my life, pretending
I am asleep? I lay with her
a long time, held by
invisible forces I could
perhaps explain but
do not understand.
All day, no one noticed
I had died. It’s not
that I was trying to hide
it. It must have been
all that life still falling
out of my pockets,
not that I was saving
it on purpose, just
that it was there
for the living.

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for JS

The first thing I told you
was that I did not need a teacher,
and you laughed and told me
I was ripe. Why did I call?
I knew my world was broken
beyond my ability to fix it,
though I still believed there
was something to fix,
and you led me to this place
where all that is dejected, rejected,
crashed and crushed is just
as it is meant to be. And in every
broken moment, wonder. In every
defeated now, possibility. Lead me.
I love how we laugh through tears each time
I see how I’ve fooled myself. Again.
How you make it a gift to be a fool.
I love how you see through
all the veils I have hung and
allow them to drop, no tugging,
no cutting, just letting them
fall as they will until I shine
like a moon in your sun. When I asked
you to be my teacher, I did
not yet know it would be you.

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You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.
—Alain de Botton

Perhaps they are not beautiful, the choke
cherry bushes all a-blossoming
beside the road. I never used to think
much of their drooping blooms all flopping, moping,
sagging from the limbs like limp white notes
gone flaccid falling off their staffs. And when
out strolling, no one sniffs the air and thinks
oh! the chokecherries! how sweet the odor!

No. But maybe it’s because I’m aging,
maybe cause I’m sagging, too, or maybe
cause life’s walloped me this year, I ran
today from bush to bush and plunged my face
in clumps of bloom and breathed them in, inhaling
bliss, white petals cradled in my hands.

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rereading the book
of my days,
every page
I’ve dog eared
as one worth living

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Dad, I'm So Glad You're Alive

evening news headline
Man Lucky To Be Alive
it is all of us

*

all this letting go,
said the hands, and nothing
to show for it

*

standing naked in
the downpour, the biggest part
of me does not get wet

*

I bet somewhere there’s
lively applause for all this
beauty we’re making

*

all those years holding
up a ceiling when it was
time to live outside

*

God said nothing
and I listened closer and
really heard nothing

*

your body,
there is not one hair that
isn’t holy

*

I keep no secrets,
the wind said, so no one can
ever blackmail me

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Counting Blessings

Three degrees,
snow on the drive
the ninth stargazer

lily opened
and there was no
apocalypse—

no horsemen four,
no asteroid,
no anti-Christ.

That made this first
cold day of winter
very, very nice.

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the unending, haiku

part dishwater, part
wine, this shared chalice of grief
and hallelujah

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