Gratitude (Poem)

Gratitude

The lemons in lemonade
remind me

of daffodils and forsythia
in daddy's dusty greenhouse,

and the dappled glitter of the sun
in its slant over Chicago.

I could celebrate it—
the single bluet

that makes lunch an odyssey
of tastes, plums not too green

to plunder, the cool water
in the red urn flowing oceanic,

better than the blackberry wine
so beloved by Beyonce.

In a cathedral of the imagination,
there are no impediments,

no one is bored, and the albatross
isn't a burden to any sailor.

Persimmons nevermore go missing,
nor snowy owls ply their dialect

like a drunken skunk.
Whereas, in gratitude, I hustle

to welcome the buzz
of the humble fly in paradise,

its canto as phenomenal as the kaddish
of the raven, or maybe the nightingale.

___________________________

In creating this found poem, I used a selection of words from a FaceBook post by Kaveh Akbar about the words poets "own". That post (originally a tweet) turned out to be a great prompt. (Also read Kaveh's post at Literary Hub.)