Just What We Need
March 23, 2016 |
| Photo courtesy Bianca Mentil |
Introduction by Ted Kooser: When we’re feeling sorry for ourselves it can help to make a list of things for which we’re grateful. Here is a fine poem of gratitude by Barbara Crooker, who lives in Pennsylvania, and its images make up just such a list. This is from her book Small Rain from Purple Flag Press.
Sustenance
The sky hangs up its starry pictures: a swan,
a crab, a horse. And even though you’re
three hundred miles away, I know you see
them, too. Right now, my side
of the bed is empty, a clear blue lake
of flannel. The distance yawns and stretches.
It’s hard to remember we swim in an ocean
of great love, so easy to fall into bickering
like little birds at the feeder fighting over proso
and millet, unaware of how large the bag of grain is,
a river of golden seeds, that the harvest was plentiful,
the corn is in the barn, and whenever we’re hungry,
a dipperful of just what we need will be spilled . . .
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry
Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also
supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
Poem copyright ©2014 by Barbara Crooker, “Sustenance,” from Small Rain, (Purple
Flag Press, 2014). Poem reprinted by permission of Barbara Crooker and the
publisher. Introduction copyright ©2015 by The Poetry Foundation. The
introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate
Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not
accept unsolicited manuscripts.
2 comments
Thanks, Kathy...The practice of gratitude has saved my life...Lovely.
ReplyDeletePS I am back posting on Sketchbook Wandering!
Rita--I'm practicing gratitude right now while my horse is recovering from an abscess--a hurt horse is better than no horse at all!
ReplyDeleteI'll be stopping by Sketchbook Wandering later today--glad to have you back.