Gratitude: October 17, 2025

The Light Continues

Linda Gregg

Every evening, an hour before
the sun goes down, I walk toward
its light, wanting to be altered.
Always in quiet, the air still.
Walking up the straight empty road
and then back. When the sun
is gone, the light continues
high up in the sky for a while.
When I return, the moon is there.
Like a changing of the guard.
I don’t expect the light
to save me, but I do believe
in the ritual. I believe
I am being born a second time
in this very plain way.

Moon in the Window

Dorianne Laux

I wish I could say I was the kind of child 
who watched the moon from her window, 
would turn toward it and wonder. 
I never wondered. I read. Dark signs 
that crawled toward the edge of the page. 
It took me years to grow a heart 
from paper and glue. All I had 
was a flashlight, bright as the moon, 
a white hole blazing beneath the sheets.

Gratitude: October 15, 2025

After Opening The New York Times I Wonder How to Write a Poem about Love

Camille T. Dungy

To love like God can love, sometimes.
Before the kettle boils to a whistle, quiet. Quiet
that is lost on me, waiting as I am
for an alarm. The sort of things I notice:
the bay over redbud blossoms, mountains
over magnolia blooms. There is always something
starting somewhere, and I have lost ambition
to look into the details. Shame fits comfortably
as my best skirt, and what can I do
but walk around in that habit? Turn the page.
Turn another page. This was meant to be
about love. Now there is nothing left but this.

On the Motion of Animals

Camille Rankine

I am trying to tell you
something but my mouth
won’t move

I want to hold you
but it comes all wrong
I am marooned

in this body
with no gift
for puppetry

I want to
know you I think
I could

love you like you
probably should
be loved but my love

is a fish
in the wrong
kind of water

where I want
to hold you but
there’s someone else

in the room
the radiator’s screaming
and my arms won’t move

Gratitude: October 14, 2025

Naming the Heartbeats
Aimee Nezhukumatathil

I’ve become the person who says Darling, who says Sugarpie,
Honeybunch, Snugglebear—and that’s just for my children.
What I call my husband is unprintable. You’re welcome. I am
his sweetheart, and finally, finally—I answer to his call and his
alone. Animals are named for people, places, or perhaps a little
Latin. Plants invite names for colors or plant-parts. When you
get a group of heartbeats together you get names that call out
into the evening’s first radiance of planets: a quiver of cobras,
a maelstrom of salamanders, an audience of squid, or an ostentation
of peacocks. But what is it called when creatures on this earth curl
and sleep, when shadows of moons we don’t yet know brush across
our faces? And what is the name for the movement we make when
we wake, swiping hand or claw or wing across our face, like trying
to remember a path or a river we’ve only visited in our dreams?

You Think You Are Something Less Real Than You Are
Wendy Xu

You put on some new pants. I put
on some sunlight. I put on a coyote. You
put on a bigger coyote. You put on all
of the coyotes. You put on the sand as it flies
beneath your incredible little paws. I put on
rain not reaching the desert. You put on how we
feel sad after this. You put on the sadness. You
put on methods for dealing with it. The sadness tries
to put you on but you say No! You wrestle
the sadness to the ground. You are big and need
large wings. You put on the large wings. You are still
a coyote. You put on the howling. You put on
things that howl back. There is nothing
you won’t put on. You put on the darkness.
You put on some stars and even what
is between them. You put on the moon. The moon
that shines. You put on how we want
to stay here. You put on how we forget where
we were before. You put on the earth how
it cracks. You put on its face when it sees us.

You with the Crack Running Through You
Kim Addonizio

I can seep in, I can dry clear.

And yes it would still be there.
And no I couldn’t hold you forever.

But isn’t it drafty at night,

alone in that canyon
with the wind of the mind

dragging its debris—

I wanted to put
my mouth on you

and draw out whatever toxin…

—but I understand. There are limits
to love. Here is a flower

that needs no water.
It can grow anywhere,

nourished on nothing.
And yes.

Omm: Startlement & All the Way to the River

Dead Stars

Out here, there’s a bowing even the trees are doing.
                 Winter’s icy hand at the back of all of us.
Black bark, slick yellow leaves, a kind of stillness that feels
so mute it’s almost in another year.

I am a hearth of spiders these days: a nest of trying.

We point out the stars that make Orion as we take out
       the trash, the rolling containers a song of suburban thunder.

It’s almost romantic as we adjust the waxy blue
       recycling bin until you say, Man, we should really learn
some new constellations.

And it’s true. We keep forgetting about Antlia, Centaurus,
       Draco, Lacerta, Hydra, Lyra, Lynx.

But mostly we’re forgetting we’re dead stars too, my mouth is full
       of dust and I wish to reclaim the rising—

to lean in the spotlight of streetlight with you, toward
       what’s larger within us, toward how we were born.

Look, we are not unspectacular things.
       We’ve come this far, survived this much. What

would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?

What if we stood up with our synapses and flesh and said, No.
     No, to the rising tides.

Stood for the many mute mouths of the sea, of the land?

What would happen if we used our bodies to bargain

for the safety of others, for earth,
                 if we declared a clean night, if we stopped being terrified,

if we launched our demands into the sky, made ourselves so big
people could point to us with the arrows they make in their minds,

rolling their trash bins out, after all of this is over?

Ada Limon

Gratitude: October 13, 2025

The Raincoat

When the doctor suggested surgery

and a brace for all my youngest years,

my parents scrambled to take me

to massage therapy, deep tissue work,

osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine

unspooled a bit, I could breathe again,

and move more in a body unclouded

by pain. My mom would tell me to sing

songs to her the whole forty-five minute

drive to Middle Two Rock Road and forty-

five minutes back from physical therapy.

She’d say, even my voice sounded unfettered

by my spine afterward. So I sang and sang,

because I thought she liked it. I never

asked her what she gave up to drive me,

or how her day was before this chore. Today,

at her age, I was driving myself home from yet

another spine appointment, singing along

to some maudlin but solid song on the radio,

and I saw a mom take her raincoat off

and give it to her young daughter when

a storm took over the afternoon. My god,

I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her

raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel

that I never got wet.

Ada Limon

❤️

One night I dreamed a dream.
As I was walking along the beach with my Lord.
Across the dark sky flashed scenes from my life.
For each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand,
One belonging to me and one to my Lord.

After the last scene of my life flashed before me,
I looked back at the footprints in the sand.
I noticed that at many times along the path of my life,
especially at the very lowest and saddest times,
there was only one set of footprints.

This really troubled me, so I asked the Lord about it.
“Lord, you said once I decided to follow you,
You’d walk with me all the way.
But I noticed that during the saddest and most troublesome times of my life,
there was only one set of footprints.
I don’t understand why, when I needed You the most, You would leave me.”

He whispered, “My precious child, I love you and will never leave you
Never, ever, during your trials and testings.
When you saw only one set of footprints,
It was then that I carried you.”

Gratitude: October 10, 2025

 I Rest My Case

You know, it’s really way past time that we come up with some type of mantra,
some type of contractual agreement, 
There’s got to be a way that you do someone that you love, 
or some process at least where you can file a grievance 
when you grieve someone that you love…
Hey, wait a minute, can I file a grievance on self?
can I tell the judge that I was the one stealing my own spiritual wealth? 
Can I really file a grievance on me? 
If I could, it would go a little something like this… 
“your honor, I have failed to give honor to this your queen, your honor.” 
“I have treated her poorly and tried to intoxicate 
over some of the things that harmed her, your honor.
She’s tried to ignore some of the things that she’s seen and not seen your honor!”
Since I’m talking about self, I’m not suggesting that you throw the book, but I’m speaking on her behalf and finally she’s taking a real thorough look. 
She’s tired, don’t want to fight no more, don’t want to make herself last.
Can’t love self while looking at a hated past. 
She’s tried to fuel it with food and tried to fuel it with a fool,
even her own punishment was unusual and cruel.
“Your honor, this might be a little nontraditional, 
but is mandatory to my destiny that I complete this ritual, 
see I’m arresting myself, see I’m arresting me, 
because I’m already connected with the jailer,
 but He made me free, that means that I hold the key! 
“Your honor, this queen is guilty of not loving me, your honor, see this queen is guilty of not giving this queen honor…. your honor!” 
So my deposition needs to go a little something like this ... the self-hate and destiny can’t coexist
I’m in some type of spiritual warfare and I’m the one struggling to exist, 
will gladly enlist 
the one who did persist 
joining the enemy‘s lines,
but its finally way beyond time. 
There will be no queen left behind! 
“Yeah, I know she’s guilty as charged of the spiritual disregard 
the reckless dishonor, of God’s chosen daughter that she purposely dishonors.” 
and since I’ve come this far, I guess it’s time for me to finally Get honest
Letting go of the victim mentality and getting some real peace and solace 
It’s time to really get into creation and demolish your honor 
in case it’s any question of my guilt, I’d like to submit into evidence...
“Exhibit A”- I have the power but in trouble did not fast and would not pray.
“Exhibit B”- She went days with no food, worry, no sleep,
“Exhibit C”- Dated an abuser with no capacity to love me 
“Exhibit D”- Dined with depression and made a cozy pallet within me 
“Exhibit E”- Days she didn’t eat, body thinking it was starving me 
“Exhibit F”- Introvert, putting real friendships to the test 
“Exhibit G”- “Guilty!”
Your honor, before I rest my case
before the defense rest, before the plaintiff rests, 
before I rest this case, I’m asking you to please arrest this case,
 and arrest this very place, because there’s no present and there is no past 
because there’s no prison for the person who makes the choice to be free 
and there’s no way in hell that I am going to live another day 
not loving me…
I rest my case.

Honey Bell-Bey