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