The second day of March gifted me with the perfect poem to capture what seeking out delights offers in each day.
"The Good News" by Thich Nhat Hanh comes my way courtesy of reading poetry every morning. At some point in the early COVID era I found A Year of Being Here, a site at which Phyllis Cole-Dai posted a poem that supports mindfulness every day for three years. Ever since I've been reading each day's poems. It turns these poems into old friends, this one reminding me that I can choose to greet a dandelion as a delight:
From "The Good News":
"The dandelion is there by the sidewalk,
smiling its wondrous smile,
singing the song of eternity."
And then there's the poem by his student Marci Thurston-Shaine, "More Good News".
"You and I are flowers of a tenacious family.
Breathe slowly and deeply,
free of previous occupation."
These poems go so well with March, when dandelions are popping out in our lawn to provide some early spring food for the bees. Such an ordinary, everyday flower, treated with scorn by lawnkeepers who attack it for daring to interrupt their smooth swards. And yet they keep coming back, persistent, blooming.
Other early flowers provide more obvious delights. The cherry plum tree I see looking out of my office window is popping with pink, blooming at a rate I almost feel I should be able to see in real time. In the back yard we have a tree dubbed the "Seuss tree." Its slender, lithe branches rise up and then droop over. We keep the bottom trimmed straight off so the branches don't drag on the small deck. This gives the tree the overall effect of a bowl-shaped haircut, resembling many of Dr. Seuss's classic characters. That tree is popping tiny white flowers, somewhat behind the cherry plum. Spring flowers bring so much delight, just waiting to be noticed.
Each morning I visit sites that bring me new poems, some of which find their way into my themed poetry collections. I'm a bit surprised that I missed "The Good News" when I compiled poems that celebrate the everyday and ordinary in life.
The site grateful.org also makes up part of my morning routine. The question of the day sometimes relates to poems I've already read that morning, or reminds me of a poem I've read in the past. The question always inspires attention, notice, appreciation—all essential elements of finding delights.
One day in March the day's question asked, "When I shift my focus to the extraordinary nature of the ordinary, what do I notice?" My response:
Simply paying attention shifts focus. Thinking of how things came to be, and came to me, shifts focus outward, to a broader awareness and appreciation. So many, many steps, coincidences, choices, decisions, happenstances if that’s a word, natural processes, sunlight and air all aligned and here I am, here we are, here is my afghan and my sofa and the coffee in my cup and the cup and the table. Extraordinary and ordinary, all at once.
Each day's delights are both ordinary and extraordinary.
Related Reading
- A Year of Poems: March
- Walking in March: Of Woods and Work
- Reruns: March Posts Worth Revisiting
- January Delights
- February Delights
- Bike Delights
