Gratitude: February, 25, 2023

1. The Mower  

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found   

A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,   

Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.   

Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world   

Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.

The first day after a death, the new absence   

Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind   

While there is still time. 

Philip Larkin

2.. HBD. Miss you always.

Gratitude: February 15, 2023

1. Joyful sharing. THE D SORAKI | I'm Coming Out | Red Bull Dance Your Style 2022

 

2. Recreation

Coming together

it is easier to work   

after our bodies   

meet

paper and pen

neither care nor profit

whether we write or not

but as your body moves

under my hands   

charged and waiting   

we cut the leash

you create me against your thighs   

hilly with images

moving through our word countries   

my body

writes into your flesh

the poem

you make of me.

Touching you I catch midnight   

as moon fires set in my throat   

I love you flesh into blossom   

I made you

and take you made

into me.

Audre Lorde

3. Reunited: Two Women

4. Czeslaw Milosz

5. Read a Little Poetry

Gratitude: February 14, 2023

this Valentine’s Day, I intend to stand
for as long as I can on a kitchen stool
and hold back the hands of the clock,
so that wherever you are, you may walk
even more lightly in your loveliness;
so that the weak, mid-February sun
(whose chill I will feel from the face
of the clock) cannot in any way
lessen the lights in your hair, and the wind
(whose subtle insistence I will feel
in the minute hand) cannot tighten
the corners of your smile. People
drearily walking the winter streets
will long remember this day:
how they glanced up to see you
there in a storefront window, glorious,
strolling along on the outside of time.

Ted Kooser 

 

Gratitude: February 12, 2023

1. Percy Wakes Me

Percy wakes me and I am not ready.

He has slept all night under the covers.

Now he's eager for action:  a walk, then breakfast.

He is sitting on the kitchen counter 

where he is not supposed to be.

How wonderful you are, I say. 

How clever, if you needed me, to wake me.

He thought he would hear a lecture and 

deeply his eyes begin to shine.

He tumbles onto the couch for more compliments.

He squirms and squeals; he has done something that he needed 

and now he hears that it's okay.

I scratch his ears, I turn him over 

and touch him everywhere.  He is

wild with the okayness of it.  Then we walk, then 

he has breakfast, and he is happy.

This is a poem about Percy.

This is a poem about more than Percy.

Think about it. 

Mary Oliver

2. The Sun

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone--
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance--
and have you ever felt for anything

such wild love--
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed--
or have you too
turned from this world--

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?

Mary Oliver

3. For I will consider my dog Percy 

For he was made small but brave of heart.

For if he met another dog he would kiss her in kindness.

For when he slept he snored only a little.

For he could be silly and noble in the same moment.

For when he spoke he remembered the trumpet and when
       he scratched he struck the floor like a drum.

For he ate only the finest food and drank only the
       purest of water, yet would nibble of the dead fish also.

For he came to me impaired and therefore certain of
       short life, yet thoroughly rejoiced in each day.

For he took his medicines without argument.

For he played easily with the neighborhood’s bull
       mastiff.

For when he came upon mud he splashed through it.

For he was an instrument for the children to learn 
       benevolence upon.

For he listened to poems as well as love-talk.

For when he sniffed it was as if he were being
       pleased by every part of the world.

For when he sickened he rallied as many times as
       he could.

For he was a mixture of gravity and waggery.

For we humans can seek self-destruction in ways
       he never dreamed of.

For he took actions both cunning and reckless, yet
       refused always to offer himself to be admonished.

For his sadness though without words was
       understandable.

For there was nothing sweeter than his peace 
       when at rest.

For there was nothing brisker than his life when 
       in motion.

For he was of the tribe of Wolf.

For when I went away he would watch for me at
       the window.

For he loved me.

For he suffered before I found him, and never
       forgot it.

For he loved Anne.

For when he lay down to enter sleep he did not argue
       about whether or not God made him.

For he could fling himself upside down and laugh
       a true laugh.

For he loved his friend Ricky.

For he would dig holes in the sand and then let
       Ricky lie in them.

For I often see his shape in the clouds and this is a
       continual blessing.

Mary Oliver

The Quarrel by Linda Pastan

 

If there were a monument   

to silence, it would not be   

the tree whose leaves   

murmur continuously   

among themselves;   

nor would it be the pond   

whose seeming stillness   

is shattered   

by the quicksilver   

surfacing of fish.   

If there were a monument   

to silence, it would be you   

standing so upright, so unforgiving,   

your mute back deflecting   

every word I say.

"Letter"

Franz Wright

January 1998

I am not acquainted with anyone
there, if they spoke to me
I would not know what to do.
But so far nobody has, I know
I certainly wouldn’t.
I don’t participate, I’m not allowed;
I just listen, and every morning
have a moment of such happiness, I breathe
and breathe until the terror returns. About the time
when they are supposed to greet one another
two people actually look into each other’s eyes
and hold hands a moment, but
the church is so big and the few who are there
are seated far apart. So this presents no real problem.
I keep my eyes fixed on the great naked corpse, the vertical corpse
who is said to be love
and who spoke the world
into being, before coming here
to be tortured and executed by it.
I don’t know what I am doing there. I do
notice the more I lose touch
with what I previously saw as my life
the more real my spot in the dark winter pew becomes—
it is infinite. What we experience
as space, the sky
that is, the sun, the stars
is intimate and rather small by comparison.
When I step outside the ugliness is so shattering
it has become dear to me, like a retarded
child, precious to me.
If only I could tell someone.
The humiliation I go through
when I think of my past
can only be described as grace.
We are created by being destroyed.

One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

 

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Accidents by Linda Pastan

There is no infant

this time,

only my own life swaddled

in bandages

and handled back to me

to hold in my two arms

like any new thing,

to hold to my bruised breasts

and promise

to cherish.

The smell of cut

flowers encloses this room,

insistent as anesthetic.

It is spring.

Outside the hospital window

the first leaves have opened

their shirt blades,

and a dozen new accidents

turn over in their sleep,

waiting to happen.

To the Mistakes

You are the ones who
were not recognized
in time although you
may have been waiting
in full sight in broad
day from the first step
that set out toward you
and although you may
have been prophesied
hung round with warnings
had your big pictures
in all the papers
yet in the flesh you
did not look like that
each of you in turn
seemed like no one else
you are the ones
who are really my own
never will leave me
forever after
or ever belong
to anyone else
you are the ones I
must have needed
the ones who led me
in spite of all
that was said about you
you placed my footsteps
on the only way

— W.S. Merwin

 

 

"Because"

Linda Pastan

Because the night you asked me,
the small scar of the quarter moon
had healed - the moon was whole again;
because life seemed so short;
because life stretched out before me
like the halls of a nightmare;
because I knew exactly what I wanted;
because I knew exactly nothing;
because I shed my childhood with my clothes -
they both had years of wear in them;
because your eyes were darker than my father's;
because my father said I could do better;
because I wanted badly to say no;
because Stanly Kowalski shouted "Stella...;"
because you were a door I could slam shut;
because endings are written before beginnings;
because I knew that after twenty years
you'd bring the plants inside for winter
and make a jungle we'd sleep in naked;
because I had free will;
because everything is ordained;
I said yes.