Day 67 | Poem to Accompany the Gift of an Amish Rug by Sam Green

Day 67 | Poem to Accompany the Gift of an Amish Rug by Sam Green

Day 54 | A Pot of Red Lentils by Peter Pereira

Day 23 | A Pot of Red Lentils by Peter Pereira

Day 53 | What I Learned From My Mother by Julia Kasdorf

Day 140 | What I Learned From My Mother by Julia Kasdorf

Day 8 | Coal Deliveryman by Ramón Cote Baraibar

Day 45 | Coal Deliveryman by Ramón Cote Baraibar

Day 6 | The Forge by Seamus Heaney

Day 15 | The Forge by Seamus Heaney

Day 140 | What I Learned From My Mother by Julia Kasdorf

What I Learned From My Mother
Julia Kasdorf

I learned from my mother how to love

the living, to have plenty of vases on hand

in case you have to rush to the hospital

with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants

still stuck to the buds. I learned to save jars

large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole

grieving household, to cube home-canned pears

and peaches, to slice through maroon grape skins

and flick out the sexual seeds with a knife point.

I learned to attend viewings even if I didn’t know

the deceased, to press the moist hands

of the living, to look in their eyes and offer

sympathy, as though I understood loss even then.

I learned that whatever we say means nothing,

what anyone will remember is that we came.

I learned to believe I had the power to ease

awful pains materially like an angel.

Like a doctor, I learned to create

from another’s suffering my own usefulness, and once

you know how to do this, you can never refuse.

To every house you enter, you must offer

healing: a chocolate cake you baked yourself,

the blessing of your voice, your chaste touch.

Day 72 | Poem to Accompany the Gift of an Amish Rug by Sam Green

Day 67 | Poem to Accompany the Gift of an Amish Rug by Sam Green.

Day 14 | The Forge by Seamus Heaney

Day 15 | The Forge by Seamus Heaney.

Day 83 | Coal Deliveryman by Ramón Cote Baraibar

Day 45 | Coal Deliveryman by Ramón Cote Baraibar.

Day 29 | Rule One by Philip Booth

Rule One
Philip Booth

Rule One of all
rules one:
No one ever knows
how much another hurts.
You.
Kate. Ray. Randall. Me.
The nurses
who were kind to you, the gaspump kid
across the bridge, the waitress here
this noon.
No one ever knows.
Or maybe in a thousand, one
has the toughness to,
to care,
to give beyond a selfish pity. Even
any given day,
given weathers, detours,
chances of what look like luck,
if we feel bad
we refuse the givens.
What blighted lives we lead.
Or follow:
showering, feeding, changing shirts or
pants, working, as one used to say,
to make ourselves presentable.
Partial
strangers to our painful selves,
we’re still stranger to
diminished friends
when they appear
to hurt.
How much we fail them,
failing to come close:
a parent,
newly single, in Seattle;
an upstate poet in intensive care.
You. Blanche. Alvin. Sue.
Who hurts
and why.
Why we guess we know.
How much we never.