Gratitude: October 8, 2025

In life I’m no longer capable of love, 

of that old feeling of being

in love, such a rusty

feeling, rusty,

functionless

toy. In odd

sequential dreams

I can still love.

Love in the old way.

Here is a sweet lozenge.

Here is some broth,

on whose surface

I have floated

edible flowers.

I can feel the old feeling

where I used to feel it,

in my chest. 

In the dream I feel it,

but when I wake

the feeling is gone.

There isn’t a word

for the feeling that replaces it.

Not numbness or emptiness.

It is a nameless feeling.

Racy in its own way.

A racy new toy. 

Diane Seuss

❤️

I Speak with Gravity

To your left, the word gravid:

the weight of new life.

To your right, the word grave:

place for putting a body

once it’s become only weight.

Between them:

existence,

ambush of amazement,

you.

I pause. I look out my window.

The big-leafed maple

today looks back undecided.

Some leaves wither brown, some keep green.

For a tree, gravity is simple.

A branch growing upward is neither

hope nor resistance.

A branch growing downward is not surrender.

One shape just becomes another.

To find light, if it must, the whole trunk will twist.

A tree doesn’t grieve that gravity

will soon enough sweep it all in.

Before into after, existence’s only offer.

And yet, about time, gravity, you are silent.

With your one, unchanging thought, what could you say?

A musical note never changing goes unheard.

My friend who is dying, still in you. I, still in you.

Two leaves almost weightless

Jane Hirshfield

Gratitude: October, 7, 2025

 The Gaffe

1

If that someone who's me yet not me yet who judges me is always with me, 
as he is, shouldn't he have been there when I said so long ago that thing 
   I said?

If he who rakes me with such not trivial shame for minor sins now were
   there then,
shouldn't he have warned me he'd even now devastate me for my
   unpardonable affront?

I'm a child then, yet already I've composed this conscience-beast, who
   harries me:
is there anything else I can say with certainty about who I was, except that I, 
   that he,

could already draw from infinitesimal transgressions complex chords
   of remorse,
and orchestrate ever-undiminishing retribution from the hapless rest
   of myself?


2

The son of some friends of my parents has died, and my parents, paying
    their call,
take me along, and I'm sent out with the dead boy's brother and some 
   others to play.

We're joking around, and words come to my mind, which to my 
   amazement are said.
How do you know when you can laugh when somebody dies, your brother dies?

is what's said, and the others go quiet, the backyard goes quiet,
   everyone stares,
and I want to know now why that someone in me who's me yet not me let
   me say it.

Shouldn't he have told me the contrition cycle would from then be ever
   upon me, 
it didn't matter that I'd really only wanted to know how grief ends,
   and when?


3

I could hear the boy's mother sobbing inside, then stopping, sobbing
   then stopping.
Was the end of her grief already there? Had her someone in her told her
   it would end?

Was her someone in her kinder to her, not tearing at her, as mine did, 
   still does, me, 
for guessing grief someday ends? Is that why her sobbing stopped 
   sometimes?

She didn't laugh, though, or I never heard her. How do you know when
   you can laugh?
Why couldn't someone have been there in me not just to accuse me, but
   to explain?

The kids were playing again, I was playing, I didn't hear anything more
   from inside.
The way now sometimes what's in me is silent, too, and sometimes, 
   though never really, forgets.

C.K. Williams

Gratitude: October 6, 2025

❤️

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

Gratitude: October 5, 2025

Just let them

Let them lie if that’s what makes them sleep at night. Let them play the victim if that’s how they cope with the truth. Let them twist the story and talk about you. Let them believe what they need to believe, because at the end of the day, people only see from the level of their own understanding. You don’t need to waste your energy proving yourself. Let them go. Let them judge you, because life will always reveal the truth. Let them face themselves when the silence becomes louder than the noise they created. You don’t need to fight battles that are not yours, and remember, when you stop giving your power to others, you take it back for yourself. 

❤️

Ledge

No use telling  
         the dead what  
you’ve learned since  

they’ve learnt it too—  

how to go on  
         without you, the mercy  
of morning, or moving,  

         the light that persists 
even if.  

✶  

Beauty is as beauty  
         does, my mother says,  
who is beautiful & speaks 

loud so she can be understood  
         unlike poets who can’t  
talk to save their lives 

so they write. 

✶ 

It’s like a language,  
         loss—  
can be  

         learned only  
by living—there— 

✶ 

What anchors us  
         to this thirst  
& earth, its threats  

& thinnesses—  
         its ways of waning  
& making the most of— 

of worse & much  
         worse—if not  
this light lifting  

up over the ridge

Kevin Young

❤️

Mantle

The dead do
     what they want
which is nothing—

sit there, mantled,
     or made real
by photographs 

in silver frames,
     or less real
by our many ministrations.

Dusting. Bleach. The world
     swept, ordered,
seemingly unending.

The dead, listless,
     lazy, grow tired
& turn off the TV—

or like a father passed
     out in an easy chair
during the evening news

      what’s watched now
does the watching.

Kevin Young

Gratitude: September 28, 2025

❤️

I want you to tell me about every person you’ve ever been in love with.
Tell me why you loved them,
then tell me why they loved you.

Tell me about a day in your life you didn’t think you’d live through.
Tell me what the word home means to you
and tell me in a way that I’ll know your mother’s name
just by the way you describe your bedroom
when you were eight.

See, I want to know the first time you felt the weight of hate,
and if that day still trembles beneath your bones.

Do you prefer to play in puddles of rain
or bounce in the bellies of snow?
And if you were to build a snowman,
would you rip two branches from a tree to build your snowman arms
or would leave your snowman armless
for the sake of being harmless to the tree?
And if you would,
would you notice how that tree weeps for you
because your snowman has no arms to hug you
every time you kiss him on the cheek?

Do you kiss your friends on the cheek?
Do you sleep beside them when they’re sad
even if it makes your lover mad?
Do you think that anger is a sincere emotion
or just the timid motion of a fragile heart trying to beat away its pain?

See, I wanna know what you think of your first name,
and if you often lie awake at night and imagine your mother’s joy
when she spoke it for the very first time.

I want you to tell me all the ways you’ve been unkind.
Tell me all the ways you’ve been cruel.
Tell me, knowing I often picture Gandhi at ten years old
beating up little boys at school.

If you were walking by a chemical plant
where smokestacks were filling the sky with dark black clouds
would you holler “Poison! Poison! Poison!” really loud
or would you whisper
“That cloud looks like a fish,
and that cloud looks like a fairy!”

Do you believe that Mary was really a virgin?
Do you believe that Moses really parted the sea?
And if you don’t believe in miracles, tell me —
how would you explain the miracle of my life to me?

See, I wanna know if you believe in any god
or if you believe in many gods
or better yet
what gods believe in you.
And for all the times that you’ve knelt before the temple of yourself,
have the prayers you asked come true?
And if they didn’t, did you feel denied?
And if you felt denied,
denied by who?

I wanna know what you see when you look in the mirror
on a day you’re feeling good.
I wanna know what you see when you look in the mirror
on a day you’re feeling bad.
I wanna know the first person who taught you your beauty
could ever be reflected on a lousy piece of glass.

If you ever reach enlightenment
will you remember how to laugh?

Have you ever been a song?
Would you think less of me
if I told you I’ve lived my entire life a little off-key?
And I’m not nearly as smart as my poetry
I just plagiarize the thoughts of the people around me
who have learned the wisdom of silence.

Do you believe that concrete perpetuates violence?
And if you do —
I want you to tell me of a meadow
where my skateboard will soar.

See, I wanna know more than what you do for a living.
I wanna know how much of your life you spend just giving,
and if you love yourself enough to also receive sometimes.
I wanna know if you bleed sometimes
from other people’s wounds,
and if you dream sometimes
that this life is just a balloon —
that if you wanted to, you could pop,
but you never would
‘cause you’d never want it to stop.

If a tree fell in the forest
and you were the only one there to hear —
if its fall to the ground didn’t make a sound,
would you panic in fear that you didn’t exist,
or would you bask in the bliss of your nothingness?

And lastly, let me ask you this:

If you and I went for a walk
and the entire walk, we didn’t talk —
do you think eventually, we’d… kiss?

No, wait.
That’s asking too much —
after all,
this is only our first date.

Andrea Gibson 

Mirror, Mirror

“We have so much healing to do of the damage to me from thirty five years of abandonment of self, degradation of body, disregard for my own well being, there is so much healing to do, that’s a long time, I was deep in the paint in this thing for a long time, so there are a lot of amends I am making to myself about things  I’m sorry that I made myself do in order to get love, approval, validation, and acceptance, and so the amends process for me is like, we’re not gonna do that now, I’m not gonna make you go do that, I will take care of you…” 

In My Next Life Let Me Be a Tomato

lusting and unafraid. In this bipedal incarnation

I have always been scared of my own ripening,

mother standing outside the fitting room door.

I only become bright after Bloody Mary’s, only whole

in New Jersey summers where beefsteaks, like baubles,

sag in the yard, where we pass down heirlooms

in thin paper envelopes and I tend barefoot to a garden

that snakes with desire, unashamed to coil and spread.

Cherry Falls, Brandywine, Sweet Aperitif, I kneel

with a spool, staking and tying, checking each morning

after last night’s thunderstorm only to find more

sprawl, the tomatoes have no fear of wind and water,

they gain power from the lightning, while I, in this version

of life, retreat in bed to wither. In this life, rabbits

are afraid of my clumsy gait. In the next, let them come

willingly to nibble my lowest limbs, my outstretched

arm always offering something sweet. I want to return

from reincarnation’s spin covered in dirt and

buds. I want to be unabashed, audacious, to gobble

space, to blush deeper each day in the sun, knowing

I’ll end up in an eager mouth. An overly ripe tomato

will begin sprouting, so excited it is for more life,

so intent to be part of this world, trellising wildly.

For every time in this life I have thought of dying, let me

yield that much fruit in my next, skeleton drooping

under the weight of my own vivacity as I spread to take

more of this air, this fencepost, this forgiving light.

Natasha Rao

 The Loneliest Job in the World

As soon as you begin to ask the question, Who loves me?

you are completely screwed, because

the next question is How Much?

and then it is hundreds of hours later,

and you are still hunched over

your flowcharts and abacus,

trying to decide if you have gotten enough.

This is the loneliest job in the world:

to be an accountant of the heart.

It is late at night. You are by yourself,

and all around you, you can hear

the sounds of people moving

in and out of love,

pushing the turnstiles, putting

their coins in the slots,

paying the price which is asked,

which constantly changes.

No one knows why.

Tony Hoagland

Gratitude: May 17, 2025

Fracture

When the grizzly cubs were caught, collared, and taken away—

relocated they call it—

their mother ran back and forth on the road screaming.

Brutal sound. Torn from her lungs. Her heart,

twisted knot, hot blood rivering

to the twenty-six pounding bones of her feet.

Just weeks before

I watched a bear and her cubs run down a mountain

in the twilight.

So buoyant, they seemed to be tumbling

to the meadow,

to the yarrow root they dug, rocking

to wrest it from the hard ground, fattening for winter.

They were breathing what looked like gladness.

But that other mother . . .

Her massive head raised, desperate to catch their scent.

Each footfall a fracture in the earth’s crust.

Ellen Bass

❤️

 2-Sided Map Shows Line Where Falling Bodies Will Land

From where are we getting this information? A woman god?

I don’t think so. 

Fem greatness only ever declines on this graph

showing allowable outcomes. 

Know-it-all women decline know-it-all men 

because know-it-all men know so little it’d fit in a rice pot. 

I make my facts and data from internal sources, secret sauces.

I know better. No one knows better one’s own side of things

but knowing how to convince the true authority

on the matter that you are  

the true authority on the matter—

well…. Haven’t we all fallen for that, once?

Off-grid, between us, can you imagine knowing yourself

well enough to believe you know others as well?

This Very Dance called Every Rise, Each Fall. The one 

you must know and show in order to get anywhere in this society. 

In this stinkin’ society where you can’t even say the word

religion (doesn’t matter which) without your back

seizing up out of nowhere. I don’t know if we’re in the middle

of the ending or the beginning of some new concussion. 

I have my doubts. I think we might be fucked. 

We need some woman-greatness.

Some entity that won’t exist unless we all come together

and wish very hard for her to swim 

to our dreamy poolsides. She’d come in summer,

while everyone still wishes very hard to have a fun time.

To relax, melt in the sun, miss work. 

Float free in the water, alive-alive, not think about 

who got shot, who next, and who is right now

falling from the sky, from one side to the other one side. 

Brenda Shaughnessy 

❤️

Gratitude: May 16, 2025

One Is One

Heart, you bully, you punk, I’m wrecked, I’m shocked

stiff. You? you still try to rule the world–though

I’ve got you: identified, starving, locked

in a cage you will not leave alive, no

matter how you hate it, pound its walls,

& thrill its corridors with messages.

Brute. Spy. I trusted you. Now you reel & brawl

in your cell but I’m deaf to your rages,

your greed to go solo, your eloquent

threats of worse things you (knowing me) could do.

You scare me, bragging you’re a double agent

since jailers are prisoners’ prisoners too.

Think! Reform! Make us one. Join the rest of us,

and joy may come, and make its test of us.

Marie Ponsot

❤️

Elegy

Who would I show it to

W.S. Merwin

❤️

Thirst

Another morning and I wake with thirst

for the goodness I do not have. I walk

out to the pond and all the way God has

given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord,

I was never a quick scholar but sulked

and hunched over my books past the hour

and the bell; grant me, in your mercy,

a little more time. Love for the earth

and love for you are having such a long

conversation in my heart. Who knows what

will finally happen or where I will be sent,

yet already I have given a great many things

away, expecting to be told to pack nothing,

except the prayers which, with this thirst,

I am slowly learning.

Mary Oliver

❤️

(As Planned

After the first glass of vodka

you can accept just about anything

of life even your own mysteriousness

you think it is nice that a box

of matches is purple and brown and is called

La Petite and comes from Sweden

for they are words that you know and that

is all you know words not their feelings

or what they mean and you write because

you know them not because you understand them

because you don’t you are stupid and lazy

and will never be great but you do

what you know because what else is there?

Frank O’Hara)