Explore Poems: Gratitude

Once, in winter, I was blessed
      by lightning, the plane
sudden struck—the boom

of it, the cabin lit …

is just a garden, really.


A plot of land where you might reach down
to touch the snow

and crystallize.


 …

I'm sorry it wasn't till the end of the year
that I asked you to write about yourselves. You filled pages…

Thanks to the clouds on fire, the burning sunset,
and every diminishing as beautiful as time.
Thanks…

Today I think I am healed. I do not want
what I do not have. Even the lover who sleeps
across town—one…

Open window.
Blue sun.
Green sun.

Last night
light rain fell
off and on. Thunder

rumbling nudged me…

When you looked up and said, “Thank you,” I saw
your gratitude rise over us like rain.
It seemed external…

a man is killed in Mobile, Alabama. It is 1981, nearest what some will call the last lynching in America…

I’m here
             to tell you 
                             an old story. 
                             This
Appears to be
                 my work.
                                I live
                                in the world,
Walk
         the streets…

The feel of a much needed hug in a moment of sorrow
An unexpected helping hand from the stranger
The curl of the tiniest of fingers wrapped trustingly around your own
A gentle breeze on the cusp of Autumn
And the way a leaf...

Remember

you are not poor.
Your wealth is Infinite.
It is ever present.
It cycles and circles and ebbs and flows
and shows itself in traditions
in food
in music
in health
in relationships
in creativity
in passion
in curiosity
in laughter
in your finances
in the children
in animals
in learnings
in Spirit
in Nature

in the prayers paving...

Because my mama lost her daddy when she was too young
And she didn’t know how to hold her grief so she let it break
Like waves against the inside of her skin until it was all worn
Down trying to hold her...

I wish I had hiked the frozen hill tonight 
for reception, called to tell you I had a good time 

hearing the two Somali cab drivers laughing 
near an avalanche of on-sale oranges.  

I played a prince in absolute awe 
as the orchestra soared....

Que será, el café of this holy, incorporated place,
the wild steam of scorched espresso cakes rising
like mirages from the aromatic waste, waving
over the coffee-glossed lips of these faces
 
assembled for a standing breakfast of nostalgia,
of tastes that swirl with the delicacy...

Dear ferocious dreamer. Dear maven of song and surveyor of every flung star. Dear meandering romantic, audacious witness, dear listener with the whole of your covetous heart. Dear listener to the air’s brutal and gorgeous music, soft dancer to ballads...

O transient voyager of heaven!
⁠ ⁠ ⁠ O silent sign of winter skies!
What adverse wind thy sail has driven
⁠ ⁠ ⁠ To dungeons where a prisoner lies?

Methinks the hands that shut the sun
⁠ ⁠ ⁠ ⁠So sternly from this morning's brow
Might still their rebel task have done
⁠⁠ ⁠ ⁠ And checked a thing...

There is a bat
In Chile named
Micronyteris giovanniae
Dr. Robert Baker named it
After me. He discovered it
While studying bats
And thought the big ears
Were just like me
Maybe if the bat wrote
She would be
A poet

There is a plaque
In Lincoln Heights
Where I went
To school
And a...

We cannot buy it in bulk at Trader Joe's,
Swap it for gold, or hoard shares of Grace, Inc.,
To hedge against bad luck. We acquire it
Without contract, promissory notes, or IOUs,
Neither codicils nor fine print. We gather
Grace safe from litigation or...

the slight angling up of the forehead
neck extension                        quick jut of chin

meeting the strangers’ eyes
a gilded curtsy to the sunfill in another

in yourself      tithe of respect
in an...

I swim my laps today, slowly, slowly,
reaching my arms out & over, my fleshly oars,
the water silken on my skin, my body still able
to be a body & resting at the pool’s lip,
I watch other bodies slip through the blue,
how...