Lately, I've been thinking a lot about gratitude and luck, and I found this quote by William Arthur Ward: "Gratitude can transform common days into thanksgivings, turn routine jobs into joy, and change ordinary opportunities into blessings."

This week, I am posting a poem of mine I did not directly post before but did link to in a blog back in the spring. My apologies if you already read it. 

I wrote this poem about seven months ago, and it still feels fitting. Thank you again to Change Seven for publishing it

Wishing everyone in the world, and I mean every one, peace and light.
 

The day after getting back the medical test results

If the one you love is curled up next to you
when you wake up, and you can feel each breath;
If you can hear the rumble of the train in the distance
and see the closet at the far end of the room, heavy
with sneakers and sweatshirts, and that scarf
your mother knitted for you that you do not wear
but cannot bear to give up because her hands
spent those hours on you;
If you can rise from your bed and walk on your own
to the bathroom, which you do a time or two each night,
and are doing now, in morning,
reaching for your husband’s white terrycloth robe
because it’s softer than your own;
If your dog has not piddled in the house overnight,
has held it in until you click open the door
and she flies out and toward cut grass, and if she
barrels toward you, afterward, as she always does,
a signal that you are someone’s safety and sense of home;
If the sun falls into your front window
and the day promises to be long;
If you can taste the hazelnut in the coffee
and smell the mint plants as you water them,
the ones you put in the ground
yesterday in the late afternoon light;

If you know one person who loves you
for who you are—not the person you might be
but who you’ve become already—
and better yet, if you know more than one: the mother
who knitted you a scarf, the father who helps you
believe in a fair ever-after; the sister who tries to give
you what you want; the husband who holds you
when you worry over the letter
that said
they want you
back in,

they need to know more.

Then it’s more than enough to be grateful,
to focus on the sun and the spouse and the dog and the mint
and the grass and the gifts—all those gifts—
and the beginnings of the day,
not the ends. All those beginnings
beg you to believe—
they are enough,
and so you do.