Essential Gratitude

Essential Gratitude

If you have a bed and roof over your head,

count yourself blessed. No matter that

the mattress squeaks each time you move,

no matter that someone lit firecrackers

outside your window last night—it was not

artillery fire or the crackling of actual

flames devouring whole neighborhoods.

Pull the comforter up to your sleepless face

and thank its lumpy bulk. There is a walk

by the water waiting for you this afternoon

with the man you love, who loves you back

in spite of your anxieties. There is a glass

of thick espresso blended with whole milk,

which will leave a film across your lips.

Kiss the cup of your strange and lucky life,

then drink from it, and drink from it

for as long as you can.


We have a choice when we wake each morning, when we move through the threshold of each new moment—to approach our lives with a grateful spirit, or to focus only on what’s wrong right now. Gratitude does not mean we exclude the difficult, or ignore emotions like despair and grief that we wish were not there. The “essential gratitude” that I speak about in this poem points toward a total embrace of what Anne Lamott has called the “mixed grill” of life—the good and the bad, the beautiful and the brutal. By nature, our lives are going to include things we prefer and things (or people) we’d rather leave out. This truth came home to me as my husband and I were traveling recently in the Algarve in Portugal, thrilled to spend time in sunshine, and walk each day on boardwalks beside the ocean. Yet things had been going wrong for us from the start—construction in the buildings where we were staying, an arguing family that kept us awake each night, a mattress that squeaked each time we shifted, pulling us from hard-won sleep. This is just a sampling of the challenges we faced, and after we had settled into a new rental apartment, realizing this was yet another place surrounded by construction and traffic noise, I admit my negative feelings got the better of me. Our vacation had started to feel anything but relaxing. But my husband finally confronted me about my negativity and anxiety, and the next morning, as I sat in bed (on that squeaky mattress) with notebook and pen, I thought of those forced to live in war zones, or friends in Los Angeles who had lost everything in the fires. I vowed right then I would praise the abundance and luck that was still here with me, in spite of these minor annoyances, which don’t always seem so minor to the sleep-deprived mind. To feel the essence of true gratitude, we have to hold out our arms and accept it all—the firecrackers outside the window at midnight, and the slant of light above the perfect blue ripples of ocean. It always helps to name the good that so often coexists with the difficult, so that we can remember, as the great poet Jane Kenyon once wrote, “It might have been otherwise.”

Invitation for Writing & Reflection: Because it’s healing to be honest about a challenging situation or time in our lives, you might begin writing by acknowledging all that’s wrong right now, using the phrase from my poem, “No matter that . . . no matter that,” while also leaving room for those small good things you might still be looking forward to as well.

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In honor of Valentine's Day, I am absolutely thrilled to share that my newest anthology, Love Is for All of Us, is now available for pre-order! You can purchase signed copies here from my local indie bookstore, Battenkill Books, or order anywhere you buy your books. This collection is a labor of love, and the first collaboration with my husband, Brad Peacock. We chose love poems by LGBTQ+ folks and allies, including non-binary and trans voices, in order to celebrate love of self, nature, and each other. We had no idea that this book would be so timely, given all that's happening in our country right now, but we knew that it would be needed. We knew that it would save lives. We are pledging to donate a percentage of author proceeds to organizations like The Trevor Project that works to prevent suicide among LGBTQ+ young people, and we plan to donate copies of this book to any youth center, library or school that needs a copy. Look for us as we tour the country this summer, sharing these poems of love, tenderness, and belonging with anyone who needs to hear their message of hope.