All of my pain is a spider
I’ve learned not to crush
with the heel of my shoe
but to guide with a page
of my journal
into an empty glass.
I ask questions about
its life, its purpose
as I walk careful
out to the garden and rest
it down on the earth.
My pain—how happy
it is to leave me
whenever I treat it
kind.
I have found such joy in simple things;
A plain clean room, a nut-brown loaf of bread,
A cup of milk, a kettle as it sings,
The shelter of a roof above my head,
And in a leaf-laced square along a floor,
Where yellow sunlight glimmers through a door.
I have found such joy in things that fill
My quiet days; a curtain's blowing grace,
A potted plant upon my window sill,
A rose fresh-cut and placed within a vase,
A table cleared, a lamp beside a chair,
And books I long have loved beside me there.
