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Tag: gratitude (Page 1 of 2)

Golden-Crowned Kinglets

Poetry by Michael Magee

Little Golden-Crowned Kinglets in
the fir trees flash gold as leaves
in their cameo roles.

Today there was snow in the air
small patches of light that
brushed against my jacket.

What’s best? The little flash
of a Kinglet that moves so fast
it leaves behind its color.

Or this snow-fleeting day
coming out of nowhere to appear
at my side like a sunflower.


Michael Magee‘s newest collection “Shiny Things” (MoonPath Press) is coming out in January 2025. He lives in Tacoma, Washington.

Clare’s Boots

Nonfiction by Julie Lockhart

I’d never admit in public that it’s OK to benefit from someone else’s hardship, but the black leather Italian boots my friend with cancer recently gave me, make me giddy. Clare received a terminal diagnosis last fall. I wandered around in a shock of sadness for days. She’s doing chemo to keep some of the most horrible symptoms at bay and is responding well.

I visit Clare before Christmas in the new, one-level home that she and her husband quickly bought after the diagnosis. Clare’s elegant taste shows in the attractive décor, open floor plan and view of a well-landscaped garden with forested hills in the background. While we chat, Clare rests on the comfortable, yet chic white couch with colorful patterned throw pillows. She’s thin and pale, yet happy to see me. A young woman helper decorates her Christmas tree. I notice a plentiful pile of gifts awaiting placement under the tree and the arrival of her family. Clare’s husband, Sam, is preparing their dinner, and I wonder how he’s holding up. He looks tired.

Clare is wearing a classy black two-piece warm up, with red piping and a bronze zipper. I love her haircut, shorter on one side, with the rest of her brown hair sweeping across her nicely chiseled features. Clare shares about family visits, making amends, and doing what she can to enjoy the life she has left. My heart swells to witness her strength.

Our conversation moves to the things she can’t wear anymore. She lifts a swollen ankle for me to see and mentions she’s looking for someone who wears size 8.5 shoes. My hand shoots up like a schoolgirl. She leads me into her well-organized closet filled with sophistication reflecting years as a successful businesswoman.

Turning to a floor-to-ceiling shelf, she starts pulling out shoes and boots—all designer. I’ve never spent that kind of money on footwear. I step into three pairs of casual sandals, and check to make sure she wants me to have them. Then she pulls out the Italian boots. My belly flutters with glee as I slip them on. They fit perfectly. Smooth black leather envelops my foot, with a low heel, quilted boot fabric rising up my leg, leather again at the top, and a buckle in back—mid-calf height. Perfect. I don’t want to appear greedy for more, so I put the sandals and boots in a paper bag she has given me and express my thrill and gratitude.

When I get home, I don my skinny jeans and pick up the boots to look closer. They’re lined with a silky-feeling plaid fabric. I pull both on, run my hands down each, and walk out of the closet to show them off to my husband. He loves them too. Later that evening, we head out to dinner, and I again put on the cozy boots. Walking from the parking lot down the street to the restaurant, I picture myself looking stylish, like I’m taking something of Clare’s essence with me—her big heart with an ethos of right action and generosity, especially for kids’ causes. In her boots, perhaps I can walk a little closer to understanding and supporting her journey.

I wonder why I’ve never bought myself nice boots like this. I experience delight with every step and in every place I go. Spending my shopping time in consignment and discount stores, I scour everything for a good deal, even though my mother taught me to love designer clothes. A few lean years in my career led me to frugal spending habits. Yet my finances in retirement no longer require that I be so stingy with myself. I imagine myself boot shopping, and wonder when things in the downtown stores go on sale. Maybe it’s time to loosen up and buy myself nicer attire regardless of discounts.


With the holidays behind us, I make a quick visit to give Clare a poetry book that I hope she and her husband will find meaningful. I hesitate to put the boots on, and choose something else, not wanting to flaunt what she could no longer wear. She looks radiant when I walk in, like she’s gotten her vitality back. I observe the loving interaction between Clare and Sam. He looks good, too—brighter, with a big smile.

The three of us launch into a short but deep conversation about what’s important in life. Sam says, “No bullshit, every moment is precious.” Agreeing, I can see that the two are growing through this difficult time together—with grace and caring. The love between them sings so sweetly. It’s true that we never really know what tomorrow will bring. Looking from one to the other as they talk makes me grateful to witness glimmerings of their process.

I am about to get up to leave when Clare asks for a favor. “Of course,” I respond.

Clare wears a sheepish grin before asking. “You know those boots I gave you? Well, my ankles aren’t swollen anymore, and I’m wondering if I can get them back? I have athletic shoes, but nothing for my nicer clothing.” My heart sinks into my belly for a brief moment—oh those beautiful boots. Yet a few seconds later, I feel elated that she has experienced physical improvement—enough to wear her Italian boots again. Clare apologizes for wanting them back.

Smiling, I say “Absolutely. I will bring them over tomorrow.”

This morning I again slip on the boots that give me such pleasure. I take a deep breath in, with an intentional outbreath of letting go. Material things don’t mean anything next to the treasure of Clare’s friendship and trust in me during this difficult journey. I can buy my own boots. I pull them off one by one, run a little shoe polish over their surface to cover some scuff marks, and slide my feet into my consignment shop clogs.


Julie Lockhart loves an adventure in wild places. Her essays have appeared in The Journal of Wild Culture, bioStories, Feels Blind Literary, Women on Writing Essay Contests, and Minerva Rising. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee. Julie lives in Port Townsend, WA. Find her online at: julietales.com.

Skipping

Poetry by Carolyn Jabs

The woman with the stethoscope
asks matter-of-factly,
“Has anyone mentioned
the pause in your heartbeat?”
I’m not one to worry,
but that night, in bed, I hold
my own hand and find the pulse.
No question, my heart
has taken up skipping.

All night I have uneasy dreams.
My heart pursues its syncopated ways,
as if to say don’t count on me,
things are not as certain as they seem.
At dawn I follow my heart’s direction—
skip over what was written
on the day’s agenda,
pause to listen to birds,
gossiping as the day breaks.

All morning my heart and I
are in cahoots. It sprints for a minute,
then hesitates like a toddler
seeing a dandelion for the first time.
I follow its lead. After a lifetime
of inattention, I want to know why
my heart hesitates, want to register
the moment it shakes off doubt
and decides we’ll live a little longer.


In her professional life, Carolyn Jabs contributed essays and articles to many publications including The New York Times, Newsweek, Working Mother, Self and Family PC. She is author of The Heirloom Gardener and co-author of Cooperative Wisdom, an award-winning book about an innovative approach to conflict resolution.

Peregrine

Poetry by Stephen J. Cribari

Two years ago we had peregrine falcons here.
They bred in a nest under a nearby bridge
That spans the Mississippi River. I
Stood riverside the day the three chicks fledged
Dropping from the bridge’s understructure,
Falling in a wild, flailing descent
And finding just before they hit the river
What wings mean, solving the secret code
That opened a doorway into the halls of the sky.

A month later curious I returned.
The empty nest, but there up in the sky
High up in the sky a black speck
Like a piece of protein floating across the eye
But reaching speeds that edged beyond my vision.
Like a thunderbolt loosed from the sky it bolted down,
Leveled to a plane above the river,
Screamed through the bridge’s latticed understructure
Then turned as bolting horse will dead stop turn

And flaring into the bridge’s latticework
Settled on the beam where its nest had been.
And there it began to preen, as if nothing at all
Let alone something utterly extraordinary
Had just happened. And I thought of you.


Stephen J. Cribari has been writing poetry for over sixty years. In a parallel life he was a criminal defense attorney and law professor. He resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Still Life (2020) and Delayed en Route (2022) are published by Lothrop Street Press.

At Home

Nonfiction by Joseph O’Day

When her uncles and aunts tried to embrace my nine-month-old granddaughter at our Thanksgiving dinner, she cried and struggled for freedom. I rescued her into my arms, and they called me baby hog. “She’s not yet comfortable with you guys,” I said.

I didn’t think it would take long. I’d been babysitting since September and she had settled in with me, crawling through my house using her bum shuffle—her left leg tucked underneath as her arms and right leg slid her forward. She shuffled over, then sat back and raised her arms, and I lifted her up and we toured the kitchen, the bedrooms, the dining and living rooms, and the TV room, where we watched Daniel Tiger and Rafi and Cleo & Cuquin’s rendition of La Cucaracha. She became so comfortable with me and my house that she led me on tours, moving ahead of me and turning around periodically to make sure I followed.

Our Christmas and New Year’s gatherings did the trick; familiarity bred comfort. She started initiating contact with extended family, snuggling with Aunt Patricia, Uncle Joe, and Aunt Kat as they read her books, leaping into Uncle Josh’s arms as he soared her through the hallways.

At her house months later we celebrated her first birthday. We watched as she ate yogurt-frosted cupcakes, watched it smear on her face and arms, the chair, and anyone who got near. When the party wore down, her mom gave her free reign, placing her on the hardwood floor while we washed tables, threw paper dishes and cups into the trash, and collected scattered bows and gift wrappings.

My granddaughter shuffled around the place so rapidly that it took my breath away: from living room to kitchen, from her aunts’ legs to her uncles’ arms, from her baby walker to the open dishwasher. We had to take care where we stepped. She suddenly appeared at our feet, then vanished, moving with the buoyancy of someone savoring the secure, loving, surroundings of home.


Joseph O’Day’s writing has appeared in Oyster River Pages, Spry Literary Journal, The Critical Flame: A Journal of Literature and Culture, bioStories, Patchwork Lit Mag, Adelaide Literary Magazine, and Molecule: A Tiny Lit Mag. Joseph received his MA in English (Creative Writing) from Salem State University.

At the Lakefront, beside Sunshine

Poetry by Stacie Eirich

Glittering waves in wind
sunlight high in the sky
beaming into blue
you marvel at the beauty
in a dandelion, proclaim it
not a weed but a flower
pick its yellow head
put it in my palm.

My hand in yours, you skate past
girls on scooters, boys on bikes
a dog you call Toast.
We listen to the roar
of a mower, the slap-slap of water
the cries of shorebirds
from beyond the beach, where two kids play
in cold waters, brave in bathing suits.

You turn on pop songs, sing along beside me
dance a jig, weave your arm in mine, say thank you
for bringing us here, stop to swing, then ask
for snowballs & ice cream.
We savor mint chocolate and cherry chip
in the warmth of the shop, you watching and listening
to a little brother and his sisters, me watching you
quietly spooning cold sweetness to our lips.

I finish first, sit content, tell you
to take your time.
That it’s what we came for
to take time.
To hold and warm each others’ hands
to find and follow sunlight
the rush of the wind, the sweetness
of this life.

A gift to open slowly
you singing like starlight
you next to me, beside the water
your fingers pressed
into mine, time shimmering
like waves on sand
tall white sails
rising into the distance.

I touch the dandelion head
in my tote pocket
spread its yellow cup
in my fingers
feel the sun
feel you
beside me
still shining.


Stacie Eirich is a mother, poet & singer in Louisiana. Her work is forthcoming in Synkroniciti Magazine. Her poem “Blossoms” published in Susurrus Magazine in 2023 was nominated for The Pushcart Prize. In 2023, she lived in Memphis while caring for her child through cancer treatments at St. Jude. www.stacieeirich.com

Bookmark

Poetry by John Hoyte

I grabbed it from the bookcase, to read before bed.
The Problem of Pain, a two shillings and sixpence
Fontana paperback, from my college days.
It tackles the question, If there is a loving God,
why does He permit pain?
I chose it to see if C.S. Lewis’s writing
still resonated for me.
A bookmark fell out.
The Grand Hotel, Taipei, Taiwan.
Pain came surging back, engulfing me
in sorrow, though bitterness had gone.

The year my wife died had been a year of devastation.
To get away, Lisa, my daughter, and I flew
to Taiwan on a business trip.
We stayed at The Grand Hotel, and felt like royalty.
External opulence, internal grief.
I look back over thirty years.
My daughter’s daughters are in college
and I have just turned ninety-one.

I went to sleep in gratitude, thinking of my daughter
who has stood by me with love, grace and courage.


John Hoyte is a retired engineer, artist, and explorer.

The Laundry Laughers

Nonfiction by Sandra Marilyn

In the days before a washing machine came to live in my kitchen and car keys came to live in my pocket to further my isolation from the bus people and the laundromat people, I had enjoyed watching those folks. I imagined I could live inside their lives for just a moment, could learn their secrets. My family was fond of saying, “grow where you’re planted”. Since I did not stay where I was planted, I modified it to say, “learn where you land.”

On one of those laundromat days I sat on a hard chair feeling its plastic slat cut into my bottom and watching my clothes tumble in an endless circle. I was feeling a bit lonely and bored when the sounds of the people around me rose up to obscure my self-absorption. The couple in the corner were having a dust-up that sometimes threatened to become too loud for a public place but then was pulled back to an almost whisper. The old man by the front door was chatting with himself in an amiable way and chortling at his own jokes.

At the folding table next to me was a small extended family of women and girls just pulling their clothes out of the dryer and tossing them into a basket. The four young girls seemed to be in a range between eight and fourteen years. My scant Spanish caught just a bit of their jovial conversation about boys and school. Then one of the girls pulled a red sweater out of the pile and held it up for inspection. The girls were average sizes but the sweater had become so small it might have fit a tiny dog. The entire family froze for a moment, stunned by the mistake and maybe considered placing blame. They all stared intently at the tiny sweater and then wide-eyed at one another. Someone had put a wool sweater in the wash when it should have gone to the dry cleaner.  

My thoughts were about how much the garment might have cost, how pretty it must have been. Had it been a gift? Which one of them counted it as a part of the wardrobe that defined her style? I would have been extremely angry at the wasteful mistake, and I definitely would have expressed that anger noisily. I would have felt defiled by the intrusion of the clumsy mistake into the collection of things I cherished, things that defined my place in the world. I thought of my own sweaters folded perfectly and waiting for their turn to impress my companions. Just waiting to announce their cashmere luxury to a world that judged my success by my assemblage of stuff. My old left-wing sensibilities rose up to argue that the world needed my intellect, my creativity, my passion, and not my cashmere. And I believed that, but it was a heavy truth laden with responsibility and it struggled to rise above the material preoccupations that lived in the swampy bottom of my soul. The swamp was thick with southern expectations I would never meet. The useless notions about what would be appropriate displays of success grew moldy there on the bottom but steadfastly refused to rot and decompose.

The moment the family had stood gaping at the tiny sweater passed and the girls began a titter that rose steadily into a boisterous mirth. The pure notes of their young voices began to fill the room with their delight. Each girl took a part of the tiny sweater and began to pull, as if they could pull it back into its original size. They pulled and laughed and laughed and pulled and spun around in a circle of mad silliness, until they collapsed on the floor in a flurry of giggles. Their joy rose to the ceiling of the room and fell back down tickling even the grumpiest of the beleaguered laundry doers. Their hilarity swirled and danced around our heads, as captivating as a quartet of piccolos. And it carried them right over the abyss where materialism would like to have captured their sparkly freedom.

Finally, a mock stern glance from their mother, who had only just managed to contain her own giggles, called them back to the pile of unfolded laundry. Mother, grandmother, and the four girls returned to the seriousness of folding clothes but occasional bursts of laughter bubbled up and were sucked back in.

Oh, how I wanted to live for a bit longer in the life of that family of laundry laughers, how I envied them their joyful freedom. I often remember them when I am tempted to believe that objects will save me, that they will present me as I want to be seen, that they matter much at all.


Sandra Marilyn lives in San Francisco with her wife and a tiny dog. She believes it is her responsibility to continually reeducate herself, so she spends her days trying to pry open the doors and windows and searching for the words to describe the light that comes through the openings.

January 1

Poetry by Alexandra Newton Rios

This is a new year I rise to meet
to run to the sun rising red
amidst eucalyptus and slender-leafed tarcos
running the track of black earth softened
by the rains in a province of deep heat.
I run to the rhythms of a life
found in the doing
the raising of five children
transformed into leading five adults
into their next steps without me.
All is well say the birds as I run
this leaving one place for another
this removing myself suddenly with gratitude
for all that a tree over two hundred and fifty years old,
a mountain and the birds give.
We are rising to meet the new year,
the new day, the new possibility
which is beginning.
Yellow-bellied quetupí  know this every day.


Alexandra Newton Rios is a University of Iowa’s Writers Workshop graduate. Madeleine L’Engle spoke highly of her poems in 1995, and she received poetic praise from W.S. Merwin in 2011. She is a bi-hemispherical mother of five. Read an earlier poem in The Bluebird Word from July 2023.

Framed Declaration

Poetry by John Zedolik

I thank father fish for my spine,
which with the earth allows me to align
and look straight up if I choose
into the sky in effort not to lose

my bearings and reconfirm my status
as one of capacity to focus on the stratus
and my semi-separation from the ground
rejoice in relative stability found

in the necessary inherited armature
support to compete with any furniture
remain myself and certainly discrete
while with lifetime gravity I must compete


John Zedolik recently published his third collection, Mother Mourning (Wipf & Stock). He has also published two other collections, When the Spirit Moves Me (Wipf & Stock), and Salient Points and Sharp Angles (WordTech Editions), which are available through Amazon. Additionally, he has published many poems in journals around the world.

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