Poems for every occasion

I checked out The Poetry Remedy: Prescriptions for the Heart, Mind, and Soul curated by William Sieghart. If you have searched for a poetry resource that offers something for everything that life throws your way, this might be a good volume to have on hand. Think of it as a poetry first aid kit! There are some fan favorites here: Rumi, Hafiz, Derek Walcott, Mary Oliver, Walt Whitman and more.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

“The Summer Day” is one of Mary Oliver’s most recognizable poems, especially the end:

“I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?”

(Read the full poem on poets.org or better yet, spring for a book of her poetry. She published more than 30 collections of poems and essays.)

What do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

It’s such a great question and one we can keep asking. Every day, every moment is a chance to recognize the brief length of our existence and to begin again. I think she would have loved the very modern advice to “touch grass.”

There’s a new Mary Oliver documentary airing on PBS starting August 25 by filmmaker Sasha Waters: Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World | American Masters | PBS

Photo by Harry Le on Unsplash

Rebecca del Rio is an American-born poet who lives in Catalunya, Spain. In his recent book, In the Absence of the Ordinary, Francis Weller includes a poem by Rebecca del Rio, Prescription for the Disillusioned, from her collection of poetry of the same name. 

Come new to this day.

Remove the rigid

overcoat of experience,

the notion of knowing,

the beliefs that cloud

your vision.

Read more online

Photo by Johnny Cohen on Unsplash

Matt Moberg (via the internet of friends)

Special thanks to Patti Digh for sharing this on her Substack. As she said, “Yes, it’s a long poem. Read it anyway.”

Untitled poem
by Matt Moberg and https://www.mattmoberg.net/

I think every human being
eventually has a moment
where they are standing outside in sweatpants
that have lost the will to be pants,
holding a trash bag, a divorce, a parking ticket,
or some other receipt from the universe
that says, “surprise, this too is part of it.”

And then the sky bruises purple.
And the air touches your face
like it knows your whole story.
And suddenly you realize:
all the real is actually unreal.

The dirt.
The breath.
The weird little bones in your hands.
The fact that we are here,
on a floating rock with pollen counts,
paying bills,
missing dead people,
loving living people
who say “leaving now”
while still fully naked and looking for socks.

And still,
the moon clocks in.
No applause.
No benefits.
No note from management saying,
“Great work being ancient and luminous again.”

Just the moon,
working nights
like a single mother with no applause,
packing silver lunches
for every dark thing
that still has to rise.

Tell me that isn’t holy.
Tell me there is a better word
than sacred
for the way light keeps returning
with no guarantee
we will actually stop and take note.

I know people who believe in therapy,
probiotics,
tarot,
twelve-step meetings,
manifestation journals,
and waiting exactly eleven minutes
before texting back
so they do not appear emotionally available,
even though their whole nervous system
is standing in the driveway holding flowers.

And underneath all of it,
every ritual,
every doctrine,
every smoothie with chia seeds,
the prayer is the same:
Please let me be loved.
Please let me be forgiven.
Please let this strange little life
mean something
before my lower back
submits its formal resignation.

What is going on?
For real tho—What is this place?
This unbearable tenderness
of being alive long enough
to watch steam lift from coffee in winter
like a soul practicing leaving.

To see your friend laugh so hard
they slap the table
as if joy is a mosquito
they are trying to kill.

To hear a child say “pisghetti”
and, for one shining second,
realize language
has finally been improved.

I know I already noted this in the first piece,
but the older I get,
the less use I have for certainty.

Certainty has never made me pull over
because the sunset looked like God
dropped a jar of peach jam
across the whole midwestern sky
and decided to be lazy
and not clean up.

Certainty has never made me gasp
at rain on hot pavement.
Certainty has never found me
in the cereal aisle,
holding Captain Crunch,
suddenly remembering
that everyone I have ever loved

was made from stardust,
hunger,
and a series of decisions
we probably should have slept on.

No.

It has always been awe.
Awe was the first church.
Before steeples.
Before committees.
Before men got involved
and started making rules about skirts.

Awe was there
with its wild hair
and muddy feet,
saying:

Look.
Look again.
Look until looking
becomes love.

Awe, and soup.

Awe, and someone rubbing your back
when you are sick.
Awe, and old couples at Target
arguing gently about avocados,
as if marriage is not one vow
but ten thousand errands
performed beside the person
who knows exactly
how you like the cart pushed.

Maybe gratitude
was never meant to sound elegant.
Maybe gratitude sounds like:
“Damn.
That woodpecker is trying
to beat that tree from itself.”

Maybe gratitude sounds like:
“Thank you, body,
for continuing to drag me through this world
despite the many slim jims
I have done to you
at gas stations.”

Maybe gratitude sounds like:
“Thank you to the dogs
who lose their entire minds
when we come home
as if we have returned from war
and not Walgreens.”

For me, that might be my gospel.

That joy that does not wait for us
to be impressive but only needs us
to come through the door.

Because the truth is,
this life is devastating.

And ridiculous.

One minute you are 22 and invincible,
driving too fast,
eating gas station nachos
with the confidence of a Greek god.

The next minute you are googling,
“Can sneezing cause a hamstring injury?”
and the answer is,
apparently,
“Welcome to the second half of your life.”

But even now—
even tired,
even grieving,
even emotionally held together
by iced coffee, playlists,
and one very specific wolves hoodie—
we keep finding reasons
to stay soft.

We plant tomatoes
even though grief is real.

We bake bread
even though the news is on fire.

We send photos of the sky
to people we love
with captions like,
“LOOK,”
as if beauty is an emergency
and we are all volunteer firefighters.

We keep saying,
“You have to see this,”
because wonder
is the oldest form
of resurrection.

So here’s to the believers
and the atheists
and the agnostics

and the people whose entire theology
is just trying not to cry
in the DMV line.

Here’s to the people clinging to faith.

Here’s to the people clinging to Xanax
and oat milk
and the one group chat
where nobody pretends to be okay.

Here’s to the tender-hearted weirdos.
The accidental mystics.
The ones who can contemplate mortality
for six straight hours
and then become emotionally attached
to a perfect peach.

The ones who know
despair has a mouth,
but so does laughter.

May we never stop being drop-kicked by beauty
in the middle of a Sunday afternoon.

May we never become so polished
that we forget how to stand
in the Starbucks line of existence
with our dumb, gorgeous hearts open,
feeling the enormity of it all
rattle around in our bones
like thunder
looking for somewhere to laugh.

And may we remember:

whatever else this is,
whatever mess,
whatever miracle,
whatever cosmic group project
no one was prepped for—
all’ve it is astonishing.
that we are here.
that we have loved enough to be ruined.
that the moon keeps showing up.
that bread exists.

So pass it on.

Tear off a piece
with your bare hands.
Take it in as you take it down.
And then go outside and look at that moon.

Thank you to someone named C.C., who forwarded this poem to Laura, who forwarded it to Jeff, who forwarded it to Patti Digh, who shared it on her Substack readers, which includes me.

He has more poetry on Facebook, plus his incredible art.

Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

and National Poetry Month

I didn’t know Janet Hutchinson until I read her obituary. She passed away last fall. I know about her because for the past 14 years, Jan sent poetry prompts daily during National Poetry Month to a mailing list of over 300 people who joined her in writing, and one of my dear friends is one of those 300 poets. But now I feel like I know her. I hope you will read it.

I loved this line: “Jan is survived by more than 8,400 poems.” It never occurred to me that you could be survived by anyone or anything except your family, but of course you can! What an incredible legacy.

I also hope my last words are “I love you” and “Wow!”

Photo by Hush Naidoo Jade Photography on Unsplash

Poets and Poetry, March 2026: Cleo Wade

The poet and writer Cleo Wade has a new book of poetry coming out in a week: 

In a World of Sunrises: 365 Days of Heart, Soul, and Hope. 

I was first introduced to Cleo Wade from her 2017 TED Talk, Cleo Wade: Want to change the world? Start by being brave enough to care | TED Talk. I re-listened to it this morning, and wow, it’s just as current today. I love this part:

“…start with one small act and qualify ourselves. I am the director of national security, and so are you. Maybe no one appointed us, and there were no Senate confirmations, but we can secure a nation. When you help just one person to be more secure, a nation is more secure. With just one outstretched hand that says, ‘Are you OK? I am here for you,’ we can transform insecurity into security.”

Her books, Heart Talk, Where to Begin, and Remember Love, grace my poetry shelf. This one will, too. 

Start where you are. Do what you can. Poetry helps.

Photo by Alexandre Grégoire on Unsplash

When our cat Lille En died, the thing I missed most was her daily lap visits. She would get in my lap every morning while I woke up with my first cup of coffee. The empty lap felt like too much to bear, so I convinced Robert—and myself—that rescuing another cat was a *great* idea.

Oh, boy.

I was not prepared for the big kitten energy. Though technically an adult cat, one-year-old Fleur quickly earned the nickname Fleur the Blur. Our resident parkour expert and worm toy aficionado was more of a drive-by lap cat at best, something akin to snuggling with a Tasmanian devil.

I was bummed out about this for a long time. I know all cats are different, but dang it! I was hopeful. If there was lap time at all, it was usually with Robert. But things started to shift when she passed the two-year-old mark a few months ago. Worm toy is life—still—but she’s decided lap time is nice, too. Now, on many days, she moves in for cuddling, and I am her willing hostage.

That brings me to two recent poems by the incredible poet, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer.

Self-Portrait as Cat Pillow

Each time the cat leaps up

onto the bed, she makes

a small bright sound.

I love this sound. Love knowing

that soon her warm weight

will curl into or on top of my belly.

It’s addictive as the chime

of an incoming text.

Read the full poem on her site, Self-Portrait as Cat Pillow | A Hundred Falling Veils.

Big Conversation

I’ve become the person who talks to avocados.

Oh, look how ripe you are!

The one who talks to dust bunnies under the bed.

Oh, my goodness. How long have you been there?

I’ve become the person who narrates wind as it gusts,

the one who composes out loud while writing poems.

In short, I’m the person who once mystified me.”

Read the full poem here: Big Conversation | A Hundred Falling Veils

I especially love the line, “I am the person who once mystified me.” 

I feel the truth of that every day.

Robinson Jeffers was a poet who lived on and wrote about the Central California Coast. I learned about Jeffers from the amazing writer and poet, Maria Popova, the creator of the incredible newsletter, The Marginalian. I definitely recommend subscribing and supporting her work, if you can.

Read her essay on Jeffers here: The Beginning and the End: Robinson Jeffers’s Epic Poem About the Interwoven Mystery of Mind and Universe – The Marginalian

Read more of Jeffers’ poetry at Robinson Jeffers | The Poetry Foundation.

Photo by Photographer Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964), Library of Congress

Poets and Poetry: Andrea Gibson

Andrea Gibson (they/them) is a poet and a writer; they passed away recently. The many loving tributes propelled me to check out a book or two from the library. There was exactly one option: You Don’t Have to Be Everything, an anthology they contributed to. You can listen to them read that contribution, “No Filter,” here: Andrea Gibson – No Filter (YouTube).

BUT—so many books are on order and a waiting list has formed, making me one of their many new fans.

I wonder how Gibson would have reacted to libraries purchasing dozens of copies of their books after their death. Their own words provide clues, like these:
“Dying
is the opposite of leaving.

I am more with you
Than I ever was before.”