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Gratefulness
I will praise my failures. I will praise What I have not accomplished and do not possess Because it has led to this moment At ten in the morning on a smoky October day, Sitting on the bedroom floor in my bathrobe, Treated to a rectangle of overcast sky And a poplar whose yellow leaves, Half blown away, are as artfully arranged As the characters in a haiku.
I will praise my too-small apartment With its cheap kitchen cabinets And mismatched furniture, its jumbo litter box Stealing half the front closet whose carpet Is covered with pebbles. I will praise The dun-colored carpet itself, gayer for wine stains, And my cardboard box of a desk. Because I have sat cross-legged there And felt ideas alight on my shoulder like cardinals. And my home was a mansion then, A paradise of the new, which it is for the cats anyway As they sleep under spider plants In rich strips of sun.
I will praise my body whose middle-aged belly Protrudes and whose knees have grown knobby, This foolish animal shape who guilelessly Stared back at me from the full-length mirror Of a doctor’s office two days ago. Because it is still rain- and sun-loving matter, the same that splashed lake water as a child And rolled like a colt in June grass. And I am never more satisfied than when I am Walking or pushing or lifting with it, Loving even the ache that follows, That assurance I am rooted with earth.
And I will praise my manila folders of failed And abandoned poems, poems that will never be Published or read by anyone except me. Because not one was not perfect when first Budding, not one did not leave the fragrance Of possibility between these walls Or deepen what decency I share With damp soil and oak trees and the geese Honking high above clouds just now, Esteemed messengers I can hear but not see As I sit drinking coffee, amazed The ungainliness of my life should coalesce Into something so sleek, so elegant, As this sudden happiness.
Posted by kind permission of Francine Marie Tolf.
From Rain, Lilies, Luck © 2010 North Star Press of St. Cloud, Minnesota
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