In these days of Covid and retrogrades, many of the things which have brought us pleasure and hope in the past are no longer available to us. We are reduced to the small things, the things we have long ago stopped noticing in the haste to accomplish and do and be more than the day before.  The world may be opening back up, but the reality has not changed and our time in quarantine is likely not over.  If Covid is teaching us anything, it is that we must learn how to live within ourselves and be present in each moment.  The future is unknown, and the past is behind us and will not return. 

Welcome Morning

There is joy
in all:
in the hair I brush each morning,
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry “hello there, Anne”
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.

All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks,
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing
as the holy birds at the kitchen window
peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard,
dies young.

by Anne Sexton, from The Awful Rowing Toward God, 1975

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