Gratitude: February 21, 2021

It's All Right Someone you trusted has treated you bad.

Someone has used you to vent their ill temper.

Did you expect anything different?

Your work--better than some others'--has languished,

neglected. Or a job you tried was too hard,

and you failed. Maybe weather or bad luck

spoiled what you did. That grudge, held against you

for years after you patched up, has flared,

and you've lost a friend for a time. Things

at home aren't so good; on the job your spirits

have sunk. But just when the worst bears down

you find a pretty bubble in your soup at noon,

and outside at work a bird says, "Hi!"

Slowly the sun creeps along the floor;

it is coming your way. It touches your shoe. William Stafford * Mock Orange It is not the moon, I tell you. It is these flowers lighting the yard. I hate them. I hate them as I hate sex, the man’s mouth sealing my mouth, the man’s paralyzing body— and the cry that always escapes, the low, humiliating premise of union— In my mind tonight I hear the question and pursuing answer fused in one sound that mounts and mounts and then is split into the old selves, the tired antagonisms. Do you see? We were made fools of. And the scent of mock orange drifts through the window. How can I rest? How can I be content when there is still that odor in the world? Louise Glück  * “We always dream of attention, but we rarely want the reality of it”

Gratitude: February 19, 2024

#naomishihabnye

 

Gratitude: February 14, 2024

 

FOR YOU, FRIEND,

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