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Gratefulness
Time and again, we turn to the wisdom and comfort of poems when facing life’s challenges. Poetry envelops us in a trustworthy embrace, opening a space in our hearts to connect with the joys and hurts in the world. And in the great fullness of life that poems hold, we are able to explore the rich complexities of the human experience and feel a sense of possibility so needed in painful times.
We offer this curated collection as a gentle companion. May these poems be a refuge.
The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake… Read the full poem
We Look With Uncertainty by Anne Hillman We look with uncertainty beyond the old choices for clear-cut answers to a softer, more permeable aliveness… Read the full poem
Small Kindnesses by Danusha Laméris I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you” when someone sneezes, a leftover… Read the full poem
Instructions on Not Giving Up by Ada Limón More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate… Read the full poem
Adrift by Mark Nepo Everything is beautiful and I am so sad. This is how the heart makes a duet of wonder and grief. The light spraying through the lace of the fern is as delicate… Read the full poem
Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. Read the full poem
The Unbroken by Rashani Réa There is a brokenness out of which comes the unbroken, a shatteredness out of which blooms the unshatterable. Read the full poem
Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower by Rainer Maria Rilke Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you. Let this darkness be a bell tower… Read the full poem
It looks like the sky is coming apart and together at the same time* by Maya Stein And the body is holding its losses like a fist. And a fleshy hope is opening to an unprecedented vastness. And whatever we think we are leaving behind will keep insisting. And the things we desire will elude us. And our efforts will pose as failure. And we will not recognize… Read the full poem
Belonging by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer And if it’s true we are alone, we are alone together, the way blades of grass are alone, but exist as a field. Read the full poem
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I am going to read one of these poems each morning for the next ten days as part of my morning practice. Thank you.
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