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Gratefulness
Today, when I could do nothing, I saved an ant.
It must have come in with the morning paper, still being delivered to those who shelter in place.
A morning paper is still an essential service.
I am not an essential service.
I have coffee and books, time, a garden, silence enough to fill cisterns.
It must have first walked the morning paper, as if loosened ink taking the shape of an ant.
Then across the laptop computer — warm — then onto the back of a cushion.
Small black ant, alone, crossing a navy cushion, moving steadily because that is what it could do.
Set outside in the sun, it could not have found again its nest. What then did I save?
It did not move as if it was frightened, even while walking my hand, which moved it through swiftness and air.
Ant, alone, without companions, whose ant-heart I could not fathom— how is your life, I wanted to ask.
I lifted it, took it outside.
This first day when I could do nothing, contribute nothing beyond staying distant from my own kind, I did this.
This poem first appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle and is posted by kind permission of the poet. Jane Hirshfield’s ninth book of poems, Ledger, has recently been released by Knopf.
I grew up in a family that did not tell the story. I am listening…
a body is always a body individual or collective (whole or in many pieces) alive…
Let plain things please you again and every ordinary Monday. Bean soup in a white…
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We are delighted to announce the release of Kristi Nelson’s book Wake Up Grateful