Gratitude: April 16, 2024

An Old Story

We were made to understand it would be

Terrible. Every small want, every niggling urge,

Every hate swollen to a kind of epic wind. 

 

Livid, the land, and ravaged, like a rageful 

Dream. The worst in us having taken over 

And broken the rest utterly down. 

 

                                                                 A long age 

Passed. When at last we knew how little 

Would survive us—how little we had mended 

 

Or built that was not now lost—something 

Large and old awoke. And then our singing 

Brought on a different manner of weather. 

 

Then animals long believed gone crept down 

From trees. We took new stock of one another. 

We wept to be reminded of such color. 

Tracy K. Smith

 

Instructions on Not Giving Up by Ada Limon

 

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

Despite My Efforts Even My Prayers Have Turned into Threats by Kaveh Akbar

 

Holy father I can’t pretend

I’m not afraid to see you again

but I’ll say that when the time

comes I believe my courage

will expand like a sponge

cowboy in water. My earth-

father was far braver than me — 

coming to America he knew

no English save Rolling Stones

lyrics and how to say thanks

God. Will his goodness roll

over to my tab and if yes, how

soon? I’m sorry for neglecting

your myriad signs, which seem

obvious now as a hawk’s head

on an empty plate. I keep waking

up at the bottom of swimming

pools, the water reflecting

whatever I miss most: whiskey-

glass, pill bottles, my mother’s

oleander, which was sweet

and evergreen but toxic in all

its parts. I know it was silly

to keep what I kept from you;

you’ve always been so charmed

by my weaknesses. I just figured

you were becoming fed up with

all your making, like a virtuoso

trying not to smash apart her

flute onstage. Plus, my sins

were practically devotional:

two peaches stolen from

a bodega, which were so sweet

I savored even the bits I flossed

out my teeth. I know it’s

no excuse, but even thinking

about them now I’m drooling.

Consider the night I spent reading

another man’s lover the Dream

Songs in bed — we made it to

“a green living / drops

limply” before we were

tangled into each other, cat

still sleeping at our feet. Allow

me these treasures, Lord.

Time will break what doesn’t

bend — even time. Even you.

Gratitude: March 18, 2024

Our Nature 

The very flatness of portraits

makes for nostalgia

in the connoisseur.

 

Here’s the latest

little lip of wave

to flatten

and spread thin.

 

Let’s say

it shows our recklessness,

 

our fast gun,

 

our self-consciousness

which was really

 

our infatuation

with our own fame,

 

our escapes,

 

the easy way

we’d blend in

 

with the peasantry,

 

our loyalty

to our old gang

 

from among whom

it was our nature

 

to be singled out 

Rae Armantrout

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