It’s the third Thursday of the month, which means it’s time for A Gathering of Poetry - welcome!
There are plenty of mornings when I open the New York Times, NPR, or the BBC online, glance at the headlines, and think, I wish we didn’t live in such unprecedented times. I’ll admit that back when there wasn’t a new crisis every ten minutes, I took things for granted. I assumed the world was humming along about as smoothly as it could, and I could focus on my family and the small stuff of everyday life.
These days, I take very little for granted and often find myself longing for an ordinary day, just a calm, uneventful, ordinary day. This poem captures that feeling beautifully for me, and maybe it will for you, too.
This was a day when nothing happened,
the children went off to school
remembering their books, lunches, gloves.
All morning, the baby and I built block stacks
in the squares of light on the floor.
And lunch blended into naptime,
I cleaned out kitchen cupboards,
one of those jobs that never gets done,
then sat in a circle of sunlight
and drank ginger tea,
watched the birds at the feeder
jostle over lunch's little scraps.
A pheasant strutted from the hedgerow,
preened and flashed his jeweled head.
Now a chicken roasts in the pan,
and the children return,
the murmur of their stories dappling the air.
I peel carrots and potatoes without paring my thumb.
We listen together for your wheels on the drive.
Grace before bread.
And at the table, actual conversation,
no bickering or pokes.
And then, the drift into homework.
The baby goes to his cars, drives them
along the sofa's ridges and hills.
Leaning by the counter, we steal a long slow kiss,
tasting of coffee and cream.
The chicken's diminished to skin & skeleton,
the moon to a comma, a sliver of white,
but this has been a day of grace
in the dead of winter,
the hard cold knuckle of the year,
a day that unwrapped itself
like an unexpected gift,
and the stars turn on,
order themselves
into the winter night.
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