Memento

     Gratitude is good for you; even science says so nowadays. There's good evidence that you will be happier if you regularly give thanks, whether unto the Lord or unto one of the many gratitude journals for sale in the world. Ya gotta ac-cen-tu-ate the positive.

     One of the great expressions of gratitude of the past fifty years was written by Jane Kenyon, a fine poet who met and married another fine poet, Donald Hall. For years they lived and loved and wrote together on a farm in New Hampshire. Together they thrived. She became poet laureate of the Granite State; he became poet laureate of the United States. 

     Kenyon knew the idyll could not last. Hall got very sick. She prepared herself for his death. Then fate threw them a curve and hit Kenyon with a fatal case of leukemia. Hall was staggered, but carried on for another 23 years after Kenyon's death, producing many more books. The most heart-bruising is the one he wrote descrbiring how it felt to lose her, called Without. 

     Knowing all that only makes this poem -- perhaps the most powerful Jane Kenyon ever wrote -- more memorable. 

    OTHERWISE

     I got out of bed

     on two strong legs. 

     It might have been

     otherwise. I ate

     cereal, sweet

     milk, ripe, flawless

     peach. It might

     have been otherwise. 

     I took the dog uphill

     to the birch wood. 

     All morning I did

     the work I love.

     At noon I lay down 

     with my mate. It might

     have been otherwise. 

     We ate dinner together

     at a table with silver

     candlesticks. It might

     have been otherwise. 

     I slept in a bed

     in a room with paintings

     on the walls, and

     planned another day 

     just like this day.

     But one day, I know,

     it will be otherwise.