Gratitude

Gratitude

I sway in a basket,
soar over green quilt ground. 
I am alive. 
I am awake.
I am wrapped
in daydream. 

I want to drop
parachutes of candy,
want to dance 
in the blanketing stillness,
belt into its silence that
I am airborne,
that you 
are my moment of lift. 

You, licking your fingers,
holding them high to
test the wind. 

You, cutting cords,
stoking flames,
genius of exploration.   

I see you sailing
your own sky. I hope
it’s blue. I hope
you feel me waving,
hope you spy
my limbs signaling
thanks
thanks
thanks. 

Photo by ian dooley on Unsplash

The Prompt

Many times lately, I’ve bumped up against the reality that I have no words adequate to the intensity of my gratitude. Gratitude is a word that’s been ironed flat and folded into a paper greeting, sold in sets of a dozen or more so we can quickly, cheaply get the performance done. But gratitude—the reality, not the word—is so much rounder than any performance or duty or mildly pleasant emotion. It is big enough to take you over, to light you on fire, to sweep you off your feet and into the air. Or that’s my experience, anyway.

I’ve been experiencing that a lot lately, and often, it has to do with you. Yes, you! The community of Substack readers and writers and most especially the community of Substack poets somehow manages to take my breath away and make me feel light as air. The beauty, vulnerability, humor, and generosity of spirit that show up here in the comments thread and within the larger Substack poetry community just amazes me. I arrived here on a whim, and it’s become one of the greatest joys in my life.

That intensity of gratitude feels impossible to capture in words, but in today’s poem, I decided to try anyway. I began with a big, round, whole-body sense of gratitude, and I asked myself what images conjured similar feelings. A hot air balloon came to mind, and the poem emerged from there.

If you’d like a prompt to play with today, I invite you to do a little scan over the past week or two of your life. Make a list of emotions you recall feeling. Now choose one. If you want a challenge, choose the one that seems the most difficult to convey or adequately express.

Whatever emotion or feeling you’ve chosen, take a moment to recall it. Can you invite it back into your body for a breath or two? Let it be there without left-brain analysis. Just feel it. Taste it. Notice its texture. What is it like to feel _______ ? How can you tell that you’re feeling ______ ?

Now imagine that you are tasked with capturing what this feeling feels like via an image—a sight, a sound, a smell, etc. If many images come to mind, great, make a whole list! If no images come to mind, great, you probably opted for the challenge of picking an emotion that’s hard to convey. Be patient. Step away from this prompt for a bit, then come back again. Remember the feeling again. Find it in your body again.

Does it have a color? Does it make a sound? What kitchen tool, utensil, or appliance most closely resembles it? What child’s toy is its nearest kin? If it had a profession, what would it be and how would it dress and what might it eat for lunch? Would this feeling grow in your garden? At the bottom of the ocean? Somewhere in Death Valley? Or are you more likely to find it packaged in plastic in a Walmart shopping cart?

Let yourself play, explore, be curious. Open yourself to the ridiculous. What’s the worst that will happen? You’ll write a really zany poem? For the record, I love zany poems. Bring it on, friends. Bring on whatever is asking for expression. Bring it on, and thank you—from the bottom of my hot air balloon heart—for the gorgeous and generous ways you show up here.