Essential Gratitude

If you have a bed and roof over your head,

count yourself blessed. No matter that

the mattress squeaks each time you move,

no matter that someone lit firecrackers

outside your window last night—it was not

artillery fire or the crackling of actual

flames devouring whole neighborhoods.

Pull the comforter up to your sleepless face

and thank its lumpy bulk. There is a walk

by the water waiting for you this afternoon

with the man you love, who loves you back

in spite of your anxieties. There is a glass

of thick espresso blended with whole milk,

which will leave a film across your lips.

Kiss the cup of your strange and lucky life,

then drink from it, and drink from it

for as long as you can.

--James Crews

Circumventing the Busy Self

 

What I need tonight is a chair—
the big upholstered kind
that sighs when I sit into it,
the kind that holds me the way
I used to imagine a cloud would hold me—
downy, cozy, comfy, secure
and filled with light.
I need a chair that will make me
not want to get up to do
whatever important thing
I think I must do.
Why do I always think I need
to do something? Why
is it so hard to just sit?
So, I guess, what I really need is a chair
and a seatbelt, the kind
they have on helicopters
with five straps that meet
in the center—though
I think those are self-release,
and we all know I will soon
feel driven to rise and rush,
no matter how cumulonimbus-ish
that chair might feel, no matter
how insistent the straps.
So tonight, what I really need
is a soft chair and a five-strap seat belt
and a giant weighted blanket—
not heavy enough to crush me,
but one with enough gravity
that being still feels like the only
real choice. And if I am still, very still,
and not accomplishing anything for a while,
then perhaps I will meet this grief
I am escaping—not that I am trying
to escape it on purpose, it’s just
there is so much important
stuff to do and, perhaps,
let’s say I’ve noticed that when I just sit,
just sit,
with nothing to read and nothing
to do, the grief sits with me
and asks nothing of me except
that I meet it. In that moment,
I remember turning toward grief
is what I most want to do.
In that moment, there is nothing
on any to do list that could deter me
from meeting this grief.
Oh world, I remember.
I remember right now,
so please, what I need most tonight,
it doesn’t matter how soft,
is a chair.

--Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Safe Space

 

When there is nowhere else you feel safe,
and you think that goodness has gone extinct;
when the world seems cold as a snowed-in car
that won’t start anymore — step inside this poem.
Find solace in the spaces between each line,
breathe peace in the pause between words.
Let no one every say you don’t belong here —
you were born, you’re alive, you exist: take this
as proof that you too are loved. Say this to yourself
until it is true: May I be safe, may all beings
on this planet be safe. And feel how a small fire
kindles in your chest, spreading to the bundle
of tinder that is your heart, still humming
its tireless, ancient hymn: I am, I am, I am.

-- James Crews

Of the Empire

We will be known as a culture that feared death
and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity
for the few and cared little for the penury of the
many. We will be known as a culture that taught
and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke
little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a
commodity. And they will say that this structure
was held together politically, which it was, and
they will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of
the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.

Finding a truth teller these days is infinitely precious.

--Mary Oliver (2008)

Atlas

 

There is a kind of love called maintenance
Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it;

Which checks the insurance, and doesn’t forget
The milkman; which remembers to plant bulbs;

Which answers letters; which knows the way
The money goes; which deals with dentists

And Road Fund Tax and meeting trains,
And postcards to the lonely; which upholds

The permanently rickety elaborate
Structures of living, which is Atlas.

And maintenance is the sensible side of love,
Which knows what time and weather are doing
To my brickwork; insulates my faulty wiring;
Laughs at my dryrotten jokes; remembers
My need for gloss and grouting; which keeps
My suspect edifice upright in air,
As Atlas did the sky.

--U.A. Fanthorpe

[Photo of my Atlas...]

Wedding Thoughts: All I know about love

 

This is everything I have to tell you about love: nothing.

This is everything I've learned about marriage:  nothing.

Only that the world out there is complicated,

and there are beasts in the night, and delight and pain,

and the only thing that makes it okay, sometimes,

is to reach out a hand in the darkness and find another hand to squeeze,

and not to be alone.

It's not the kisses, or never just the kisses: it's what they mean.

Somebody's got your back.

Somebody knows your worst self and somehow doesn't want to rescue you

or send for the army to rescue them.

It's not two broken halves becoming one.

It's the light from a distant lighthouse bringing you both safely home

because home is wherever you are both together.

So this is everything I have to tell you about love and marriage: nothing,

like a book without pages or a forest without trees.

Because there are things you cannot know before you experience them.

Because no study can prepare you for the joys or the trials.

Because nobody else's love, nobody else's marriage, is like yours,

and it's a road you can only learn by walking it,

a dance you cannot be taught,

a song that did not exist before you began, together, to sing.

And because in the darkness you will reach out a hand,

not knowing for certain if someone else is even there.

And your hands will meet, 
and then neither of you will ever need to be alone again.

And that's all I know about love.

--Neil Gaiman

The Life You Have

 

This may not be the day you planned,

may not even be the life you wanted--

but this is the one you have. So wrap

your hands around the warm mug of it,

inhaling the honeyed steam of tea. Pull

the wool sweater of it closer, and relish

whatever protects you against every gust

of cold rushing in. Savor the buttered

toast and creamy sweet potato soup

of it, kissed with a hint of cinnamon

and curry. Switch on the bright floodlight

of your life and watch flurries drift down

in the yard, like a handful of confetti

tossed out over the ragged snowbanks.

--James Crews