Category: Poetry

Gratitude poem

I love this poem by Sue Sun Yom (to whom I am grateful for permission to reproduce it here). It is published on p. 111 in an anthology called Body Language: poems of the medical training experience, edited by Jain, N., Coppock, D. and Brown Clark, S., published by Boa Editions, NY: Rochester.

Gratitude

Mr. H, taciturn and a little odd, Whose wife preferred another man, And who would come faithfully Late by fifteen regular minutes Each Friday. Mrs. V and her loyal Veterinarian daughter, the other An internet mogul in Hawaii, Who wanted only for us to spare The eyebrows, though she’d lost All sense of self and hair.

Gratitude for whatever

Angus D H Ogilvy has written a cycle of poems in response to his diagnosis and treatment for cancer, called Lights in the Constellation of the Crab. He performs his poem, ‘Gratitude for whatever’ here.

Gratitude for Whatever

I can’t be anything other than grateful.

What’s the point?

Anger? Hatred? Jealousy? Lamentation?

It is too hard work.

Gratitude is the point of least resistance.

Through the casualness of ‘whatever’ in the title, and spelled out more explicitly in the poem, the poet suggests that gratitude is the default emotion – the one that requires least work to achieve. The tone of the poem is one of resignation.