Category: Poem of the Day

Poem of the Day – 06152026

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Mother to Son

By Langston Hughes

Well, son, I’ll tell you:

Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

It’s had tacks in it,

And splinters,

And boards torn up,

And places with no carpet on the floor—

Bare.

But all the time

I’se been a-climbin’ on,

And reachin’ landin’s,

And turnin’ corners,

And sometimes goin’ in the dark

Where there ain’t been no light.

So boy, don’t you turn back.

Don’t you set down on the steps

’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.

Don’t you fall now—

For I’se still goin’, honey,

I’se still climbin’,

And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

Poem of the Day Reflection

Mother to Son by Langston Hughes

There is a certain kind of wisdom that can only be earned through living. Not reading. Not studying. Living. Mother to Son feels like one of those conversations many of us have heard in one form or another. It is the voice of someone who has endured hardship long enough to understand that survival itself is an achievement.

The mother in the poem does not pretend life is fair. She does not offer comforting clichés or promise that everything will work out in the end. Instead, she speaks plainly. Her staircase is worn, splintered, and broken in places. There are no polished floors or easy paths. Yet she keeps climbing.

What strikes me most is that the poem is not really about suffering. It is about persistence. The obstacles matter, but they are not the point. The point is movement. The point is refusing to sit down on the steps when exhaustion whispers that you’ve done enough. The point is continuing upward even when you cannot see where the staircase leads.

As I get older, I find myself appreciating voices like this more than stories of effortless success. Life has a way of sanding away our illusions. We discover that most victories are not dramatic. They are quiet decisions made repeatedly. Getting out of bed after a difficult season. Trying again after failure. Choosing hope when cynicism would be easier. Those are the steps that build a life.

The poem also reminds me that every person carries a history we cannot see. Someone who appears strong today may have climbed a staircase filled with broken boards and missing rails. Their resilience did not appear overnight. It was earned one difficult step at a time.

Perhaps that is why this poem continues to resonate decades after it was written. We all encounter rough staircases eventually. Dreams stall. Relationships fracture. Bodies age. Plans unravel. The question is never whether the staircase will become difficult. The question is whether we will keep climbing when it does.

The mother’s advice is simple, but it is powerful: don’t turn back, don’t sit down, and don’t quit climbing.

Sometimes perseverance is the most courageous act of all.

Reflective Prompt

What is one “staircase” in your life that seemed impossible to climb at the time, but looking back, revealed a strength you didn’t know you possessed?

Poem of the Day – 06142026

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Ma Rainey

By Sterling A. Brown

I

When Ma Rainey

Comes to town,

Folks from anyplace

Miles aroun’,

From Cape Girardeau,

Poplar Bluff,

Flocks in to hear

Ma do her stuff;

Comes flivverin’ in,

Or ridin’ mules,

Or packed in trains,

Picknickin’ fools. . . .

That’s what it’s like,

Fo’ miles on down,

To New Orleans delta

An’ Mobile town,

When Ma hits

Anywheres aroun’.

II

Dey comes to hear Ma Rainey from de little river settlements,

From blackbottorn cornrows and from lumber camps;

Dey stumble in de hall, jes a-laughin’ an’ a-cacklin’,

Cheerin’ lak roarin’ water, lak wind in river swamps.

An’ some jokers keeps deir laughs a-goin’ in de crowded aisles,

An’ some folks sits dere waitin’ wid deir aches an’ miseries,

Till Ma comes out before dem, a-smilin’ gold-toofed smiles

An’ Long Boy ripples minors on de black an’ yellow keys.

III

O Ma Rainey,

Sing yo’ song;

Now you’s back

Whah you belong,

Git way inside us,

Keep us strong. . . .

O Ma Rainey,

Li’l an’ low;

Sing us ’bout de hard luck

Roun’ our do’;

Sing us ’bout de lonesome road

We mus’ go. . . .

IV

I talked to a fellow, an’ the fellow say,

“She jes’ catch hold of us, somekindaway.

She sang Backwater Blues one day:

‘It rained fo’ days an’ de skies was dark as night,

   Trouble taken place in de lowlands at night.

   ‘Thundered an’ lightened an’ the storm begin to roll

   Thousan’s of people ain’t got no place to go.

   ‘Den I went an’ stood upon some high ol’ lonesome hill,

   An’ looked down on the place where I used to live.’

An’ den de folks, dey natchally bowed dey heads an’ cried,

Bowed dey heavy heads, shet dey moufs up tight an’ cried,

An’ Ma lef’ de stage, an’ followed some de folks outside.”

Dere wasn’t much more de fellow say:

She jes’ gits hold of us dataway.

Personal Reflection

Some music entertains.

Some music remembers.

In Ma Rainey, Sterling A. Brown captures something larger than a performance. He shows how a song can become a gathering place for pain, resilience, memory, and survival. When Ma Rainey sings, people don’t simply hear music. They hear themselves.

That distinction is important.

The people filling the room come carrying burdens. Hard labor. Poverty. Loneliness. Racism. Disappointment. The countless wounds that rarely make headlines but leave marks all the same.

Then the music starts.

And suddenly those private struggles become shared.

Not solved.

Shared.

That is the power Brown recognizes.

The blues is often misunderstood by people who have never needed it. They hear sadness and assume despair. But the blues has never been about surrender. The blues is what happens when suffering learns how to speak.

It says:

This happened.

It hurt.

I survived.

That is not weakness.

That is testimony.

And Ma Rainey becomes more than a singer in the poem. She becomes a vessel carrying collective experience. Her voice transforms individual pain into something communal. Something bearable.

For a little while, people who felt isolated discover they are not alone.

That may be one of the deepest human needs.

Not to be fixed.
Not to be rescued.

To be understood.

Brown understood this because he understood the culture the blues emerged from. The music wasn’t born from comfort. It came from people finding ways to endure circumstances that might have broken them otherwise.

Which is why the poem still resonates.

The details may change. The technology changes. The world changes.

But people still gather around songs that tell the truth.

Songs that acknowledge heartbreak without being consumed by it.

Songs that remind us that pain can become art.

And art can become survival.

Reflection Prompts

  • What song has made you feel understood during a difficult season?
  • Have you ever found healing in simply knowing someone else felt what you were feeling?
  • What experiences in your life have become stories instead of wounds?

Poem of the Day – 06132026

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Hope Is The Thing With Feathers by Emily Dickinson

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.

Personal Reflection

Few poems capture hope as elegantly as this one.

Dickinson does something remarkable: she transforms hope from an abstract idea into a living creature. Not a mighty eagle soaring above the clouds. Not a mythical beast. Just a small bird perched within the soul, quietly singing.

That choice matters.

Because real hope rarely arrives as certainty.

It doesn’t guarantee success.
It doesn’t eliminate grief.
It doesn’t prevent heartbreak.

Instead, it endures.

The bird in Dickinson’s poem continues singing through storms, hardship, and bitter winds. It asks for nothing in return. It simply remains.

That feels true to life.

When people speak about hope, they often imagine it as something grand and dramatic. Yet most of the time, hope survives in small ways:

Getting out of bed when yesterday was difficult.
Making plans for next week despite uncertainty.
Planting a garden you’ll harvest months from now.
Calling a friend.
Starting over.

Hope is often quiet.

In fact, the strongest hope is rarely loud at all.

It whispers.

It tells us to try one more time.
To take one more step.
To believe that today’s circumstances are not the final chapter of our story.

Dickinson also reminds us that hope is not dependent on perfect conditions.

The bird sings during storms.

Not after them.

That distinction is important.

Many people postpone hope until life improves.

“I’ll feel hopeful when things get easier.”

“I’ll believe again when I have proof.”

“I’ll trust tomorrow once today stops hurting.”

But hope doesn’t wait for favorable weather.

It exists precisely because the weather turns bad.

And perhaps that is why the poem continues to resonate generations later.

It understands that hope is not naïve optimism.

It is resilience.

The quiet refusal to surrender the possibility that something better still lies ahead.

Reflection Prompts

  • What keeps singing inside you during difficult seasons?
  • Do you view hope as a feeling—or as a choice?
  • Where in your life have you seen hope survive despite the storm?

Poem of the Day – 06122026

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Imitation

Poet: Edgar Allan Poe

A dark unfathomed tide
Of interminable pride –
A mystery, and a dream,
Should my early life seem;
I say that dream was fraught
With a wild and waking thought
Of beings that have been,
Which my spirit hath not seen,
Had I let them pass me by,
With a dreaming eye!
Let none of earth inherit
That vision of my spirit;
Those thoughts I would control,
As a spell upon his soul:
For that bright hope at last
And that light time have past,
And my worldly rest hath gone
With a sigh as it passed on:
I care not though it perish
With a thought I then did cherish.

Personal Reflection

Some poems feel less like statements and more like echoes.

Imitation is one of them.

Written when Poe was still very young, the poem already carries themes that would follow him throughout his life: memory, longing, isolation, and the uneasy relationship between dreams and reality. Even here, he seems haunted by the feeling that he sees the world differently than those around him.

The poem looks backward.

Not toward a specific event, but toward a state of being.

A time when imagination felt limitless, when the mind wandered through mysteries no one else could see. The speaker recalls visions and thoughts that shaped him, experiences so personal and strange that he hesitates to pass them on to others.

That hesitation feels familiar.

Most people carry an inner world they rarely share completely.

Private fears.
Private hopes.
Private versions of themselves that never quite make it into conversation.

We learn how to function in the world, but some part of us remains hidden, known only through memory, dreams, or moments of solitude.

Poe’s speaker seems caught between gratitude and grief.

Gratitude for having experienced those visions.

Grief because they cannot be recovered.

That may be the deepest truth in the poem.

Growing older is not simply gaining years.

It is realizing that certain versions of yourself exist only in memory.

The child who believed impossible things.
The dreamer who saw wonder everywhere.
The person who stood at the edge of life before disappointment, responsibility, and loss began reshaping the landscape.

We cannot return to those earlier selves.

But neither do they disappear entirely.

They remain within us, influencing how we see beauty, sadness, love, and meaning.

Perhaps that is why the poem resonates.

It reminds us that memory is not just a record of the past.

It is a conversation between who we were and who we have become.

Reflection Prompts

  • What part of your younger self do you miss most?
  • Are there dreams you once cherished that still influence your life today?
  • How has your understanding of wonder changed as you’ve grown older?

Poem of the Day – 06112026

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Heroes Weep Before Leaving by CS Crockett


We love stories that speak of adventure,
Ones that tell us “You too could be a hero!
You must set out from your home
And see all the wonder that lies before.”
We hear the call, but many may weep
Upon the news of our leaving.

This makes it hard for us to be leaving.
Even if we know that the adventure
Is our glorious fate, those who weep
Remind us that a lasting hero
Is not made when he leaves but before.
This is why we hold on hard to home.

For surely it will be a different home
After there has been this leaving.
No one can deny that what came before
Is greater than any gold-rumor adventure.
He who would leave this for gold is no hero,
But will gnash his teeth and weep.

But also among those who will gnash and weep
Are those who hold on too hard to home.
We feel disgust for that which clings to a hero
And would not have him be leaving.
There is certainly a time for adventure.
Home just will not be what it was before.

So let us not idolize what came before,
But let us keep for what we weep
To the end of this old adventure
That took place in our changing home.
It may be hard for us to be leaving,
But when has hard stopped a hero?

It is not easy being a hero.
We remember what we learned before
This moment, but now we are really leaving.
And with this realization we too may weep.
We too must set out from our home
In search of a hard adventure.

I understand why heroes weep.
Before, it was right to be home,
But we have to leave for adventure.

Personal Reflection

Most stories focus on the departure.

The map spread across a table.
The call to adventure.
The promise of distant horizons and extraordinary things waiting just beyond the familiar.

What they often leave out is the grief.

Not the grief of failure.

The grief of leaving something worth missing.

That is the truth at the heart of this poem.

The hero does not weep because they are weak. They weep because they understand the cost of movement. Every meaningful journey requires a farewell. Every transformation asks us to leave behind a version of ourselves, a place, a season, or a certainty that once felt permanent.

We celebrate courage, but we rarely talk about what courage actually feels like.

It rarely feels fearless.

More often it feels like standing in a doorway, looking back one last time.

The poem recognizes something important: a hero is not defined by a desire to escape home. In fact, the opposite may be true. Home matters precisely because it is difficult to leave. The memories, relationships, routines, and comforts we carry with us give meaning to the road ahead.

Without something worth leaving, there is no sacrifice.

Without sacrifice, there is no real adventure.

That idea feels especially relevant beyond fantasy and folklore.

People leave homes every day.

Children grow up.
Parents age.
Relationships end.
Careers change.
Dreams evolve.

Sometimes the journey is a new city.

Sometimes it is simply becoming a new version of yourself.

And almost every meaningful change comes with a moment when part of you wants to stay where it is safe and familiar.

The poem refuses to shame that feeling.

Instead, it honors it.

Because longing for what came before does not mean you are moving in the wrong direction. It simply means what came before mattered.

And yet the poem offers another truth:

Home is not meant to become a prison.

There comes a moment when love for the familiar must coexist with a willingness to grow beyond it.

The hero cries.

Then leaves anyway.

That is the difference.

Reflection Prompts

  • What chapter of your life have you outgrown but still find difficult to leave behind?
  • Have you ever mistaken fear of change for loyalty to the past?
  • What journey is asking something of you right now?

Poem of the Day – 06102026

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The Song of the Idiot

By Rainer Maria Rilke

There is something unsettling about the speaker in this poem.

Not because he sounds dangerous.
Not because he sounds loud or broken in obvious ways.

But because he moves through the world with a strange mixture of innocence, detachment, and awareness that never fully settles into clarity.

“How nice.”

The phrase repeats with almost childlike simplicity, yet each repetition feels heavier than the last. Less comforting. More uncertain. As if the speaker is trying to convince himself the world is harmless while quietly sensing something beneath the surface he cannot fully name.

That tension gives the poem its power.

Rilke’s “idiot” does not feel foolish in the ordinary sense. He feels exposed. Unprotected against the overwhelming complexity of existence. The poem drifts through thoughts about blood, danger, ghosts, exhaustion, and meaning the way the mind drifts when it can no longer hold reality in neat categories.

And perhaps that is the deeper truth here:

Sometimes people labeled “foolish” are simply those who experience the world too openly.

Too sensitively.
Too honestly.
Without the emotional armor most people spend years constructing.

The world teaches us quickly to organize experience into certainty:

  • this is safe
  • this is dangerous
  • this matters
  • this does not
  • this is rational
  • this is absurd

But Rilke resists that structure.

Everything in the poem circles. Thoughts dissolve into one another. Meaning behaves unpredictably. The speaker notices beauty and terror almost simultaneously, unable to fully separate them.

That can feel disorienting.

But it also feels deeply human.

Because life rarely arrives in clean emotional categories. Joy and grief coexist. Fear sits beside wonder. Exhaustion lives beside tenderness. Most people simply become practiced at hiding the contradiction.

The “idiot” does not.

And maybe that is why the poem lingers.

Not because it explains anything clearly, but because it captures the strange psychological experience of trying to exist inside a world that often feels both intimate and incomprehensible at the same time.

Reflection Prompts

  • Have you ever felt emotionally out of step with the world around you?
  • What parts of yourself do you hide in order to appear more “reasonable” or composed?
  • Is sensitivity always weakness—or can it also be a form of perception others avoid?

Poem of the Day – 06062026

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Changing The Past by Donna

The past is the past for a reason.
That is where it is supposed to stay,
But some cannot let it go.
In their heads it eats away

Until all their focus becomes
The person they used to be,
The mistakes they made in their life.
Oh, if only they could see

That you cannot change what happened,
No matter how hard you try,
No matter how much you think about it,
No matter how much you cry.

What happens in your lifetime
Happens for reasons unknown,
So you have to let the cards unfold.
Let your story be shown.

Don’t get wrapped up in the negative.
Be happy with what you have been given.
Live for today not tomorrow.
Get up, get out, and start living,

Because the past is the past for a reason.
It’s been, and now it is gone,
So stop trying to think of ways to fix it.
It’s done, it’s unchangeable; move on.

Donna. “Changing The Past.” Family Friend Poems, July 6, 2011.

Personal Reflection

One of the cruelest habits of the human mind is replay.

The conversation you should have handled differently.
The relationship you stayed in too long.
The words you regret saying.
The opportunities you missed because fear sounded safer than risk.

Long after the moment has passed, the mind keeps reopening the file as if enough thinking might somehow rewrite the ending.

That’s the emotional truth sitting underneath this poem.

Not just regret—but fixation.

The exhausting belief that if we revisit the past often enough, we might finally negotiate a different outcome with memory itself.

But memory is rarely interested in compromise.

It preserves moments exactly where they hurt the most. And if we are not careful, we begin living backward—measuring the present against former versions of ourselves, former mistakes, former pain.

The poem pushes against that instinct directly.

Not by denying regret exists, but by questioning how much life we sacrifice trying to repair what cannot be undone.

That’s difficult because regret often disguises itself as responsibility. We tell ourselves:

  • “I’m just reflecting.”
  • “I’m trying to understand.”
  • “I need closure.”

Sometimes that’s true.

Other times we are simply punishing ourselves repeatedly for being human.

And being human means making mistakes with limited wisdom at the time. It means not always recognizing the importance of a moment until it has already become memory.

The poem’s reminder is simple but necessary:

You cannot build a future while permanently living in revision mode.

At some point, healing requires acceptance—not approval of what happened, not pretending pain was beneficial, but acceptance that the past no longer changes simply because we keep arguing with it internally.

That’s where freedom begins.

Not in forgetting.
Not in erasing.

In loosening your grip on the impossible task of undoing.

Because life keeps moving whether we emotionally move with it or not.

And perhaps the saddest thing isn’t the mistakes we made years ago.

It’s how many years we sometimes lose refusing to stop reliving them.

Reflection Prompts

  • What memory do you revisit most often, and what are you hoping will change?
  • Have you confused self-punishment with accountability?
  • What part of your life is waiting for you to finally stop looking backward?

Poem of the Day – 06052026

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Renewed By The Morning Light by Patricia A Fleming

I sit upon my front porch stoop
Beneath the morning sun.
Grateful for the moment spent
Away from everyone.

The air is fresh and slightly chilled,
The sky is blue and clear.
The silence that surrounds me now
Is music to my ears.

I love the morning best of all,
It’s my most tranquil time,
When the promise of a brand new day
Can ease my troubled mind.

When second chances seem more possible
And the world less cold and dark,
And hope can somehow pierce the walls
Of my sad and aching heart.

When left alone with nature
All the world seems far away
And the woes of life so trivial
When wrapped in her embrace.

But alas the birds awaken
And begin to sing their songs,
And people slowly wander by
And nod as they go on.

The sun has now grown brighter
As it rises in the sky
And in the distance there’s a whistle
As a train goes lumbering by.

The world is calling out to me
To jump back in the fray.
To have faith things can get better
And let go of yesterday.

So today I get to start again
By the morning light renewed.
Feeling brave and energized,
There is nothing I can’t do.

Personal Reflection

There’s a particular kind of healing that arrives quietly.

Not through dramatic breakthroughs.
Not through speeches or revelations.

But through small moments of stillness before the world fully wakes up.

That’s the space this poem understands so well.

The front porch.
The cool air.
The silence before obligation returns.

It’s a simple scene, but simplicity is often where exhausted people finally breathe honestly. Before the noise starts. Before expectations begin pressing against the mind again. Before phones ring, traffic moves, and the world demands performance.

Morning becomes more than a time of day here.

It becomes permission.

Permission to pause long enough to remember that life is larger than whatever burden followed you into the night before.

That’s what makes the poem resonate emotionally. It doesn’t deny struggle. The speaker openly carries sadness, worry, emotional fatigue. But nature creates a temporary clearing where those things loosen their grip just enough for hope to enter.

And hope, in this poem, is not loud.

It doesn’t arrive as certainty that everything will suddenly improve. It arrives as possibility.

A subtle but important difference.

“Second chances seem more possible…”

That line feels honest because many people don’t wake up transformed. They wake up tired. Still carrying grief, anxiety, regret, loneliness, unfinished problems.

But sometimes morning offers enough light to continue anyway.

That’s the quiet miracle.

Not perfection.
Renewal.

And perhaps the poem’s deepest truth is this:

The world that overwhelms us is often the same world capable of restoring us—if we slow down long enough to notice it.

The birds.
The sky.
The warmth of sunlight.
The rhythm of ordinary life continuing despite everything.

These small things do not erase pain.

But they remind us pain is not the only thing that exists.

By the end, the speaker chooses to step back into life—not because the struggle disappeared, but because hope returned just enough to make movement possible again.

That’s courage in its most human form.

Reflection Prompts

  • What small ritual or quiet moment helps you feel grounded again?
  • When was the last time you allowed yourself to pause without guilt?
  • What “morning light” in your life helps you begin again after difficult seasons?

Poem of the Day – 06032026

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This Is A Daily Reminder by Nicolette

This is a daily reminder
To relax,
To not get angry over small things,
To stay calm.

This is a daily reminder
To be yourself,
To not care what people think,
To know you can be anything.

This is a daily reminder
To love yourself,
To not hurt yourself,
To not work yourself up.

This is a daily reminder
That you are beautiful,
That you are amazing,
That you will succeed.

This is a daily reminder
To always have hope,
To have faith,
To know everything will be okay.

This is a daily reminder
That you have made it so far already,
That you haven’t given up,
That whatever you’re doing is right,
And that you are going to be amazing.

Don’t give up.
Keep holding on and believing.

At first glance, this poem feels simple.

Gentle encouragement.
A list of affirmations.
The kind of words people scroll past quickly because they seem too soft to carry weight.

But simplicity is often misunderstood.

Because sometimes the hardest thing a person can do is not survive catastrophe.

It’s learning how to speak kindly to themselves on an ordinary Tuesday.

That’s where this poem quietly matters.

Not in grand declarations.
Not in literary complexity.

But in repetition.

“This is a daily reminder…”

Daily.

Because self-worth is rarely a lesson learned once and permanently kept. Most people wake up having to negotiate with their own mind all over again.

To quiet the voice that says:

  • you’re behind
  • you’re failing
  • you’re too much
  • you’re not enough
  • everyone else has figured it out except you

That voice doesn’t disappear because someone posts a motivational quote online. Real life is heavier than that.

Which is why the poem works best when read not as certainty—but as practice.

A person reminding themselves to breathe.
To soften.
To stay.
To not turn every mistake into evidence of worthlessness.

There’s courage in that kind of repetition.

Especially in a culture that rewards exhaustion, comparison, and self-destruction disguised as ambition.

We are taught to optimize ourselves relentlessly:
Work harder.
Produce more.
Be better.
Fix everything immediately.

Very few people are taught how to rest without guilt.
Or how to exist without constantly proving their value.

So a poem like this can sound naïve to cynical ears.

But maybe cynicism is sometimes just exhaustion wearing armor.

Because beneath all the noise, most people still need reminders:

  • that healing is uneven
  • that progress can be invisible for a while
  • that surviving another day still counts
  • that being human does not require perfection

And perhaps the line that matters most is the quietest one:

“You haven’t given up.”

For many people, that alone is an achievement no one else fully sees.

Reflection Prompts

  • What do you repeatedly say to yourself when no one else is around?
  • Do you treat encouragement as weakness while accepting self-criticism as truth?
  • What would change if you spoke to yourself with the same patience you offer others?

Poem of the Day – 06022026

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Ithaka

By C. P. Cavafy

As you set out for Ithaka

hope your road is a long one,

full of adventure, full of discovery.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,

angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:

you’ll never find things like that on your way

as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,

as long as a rare excitement

stirs your spirit and your body.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,

wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them

unless you bring them along inside your soul,

unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.

May there be many summer mornings when,

with what pleasure, what joy,

you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;

may you stop at Phoenician trading stations

to buy fine things,

mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

sensual perfume of every kind—

as many sensual perfumes as you can;

and may you visit many Egyptian cities

to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you’re destined for.

But don’t hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for years,

so you’re old by the time you reach the island,

wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.

Without her you wouldn’t have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.

Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,

you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

Poem of the Day – 05262026

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The Tobacco Shop

by Fernando Pessoa


I’m nothing.
I’ll always be nothing.
I can’t want to be something.
But I have in me all the dreams of the world.

Windows of my room,
The room of one of the world’s millions nobody knows
(And if they knew me, what would they know?),
You open onto the mystery of a street continually crossed by people,
A street inaccessible to any and every thought,
Real, impossibly real, certain, unknowingly certain,
With the mystery of things beneath the stones and beings,
With death making the walls damp and the hair of men white,
With Destiny driving the wagon of everything down the road of nothing.

Today I’m defeated, as if I’d learned the truth.
Today I’m lucid, as if I were about to die
And had no greater kinship with things
Than to say farewell, this building and this side of the street becoming
A row of train cars, with the whistle for departure
Blowing in my head
And my nerves jolting and bones creaking as we pull out.

Today I’m bewildered, like a man who wondered and discovered and forgot.
Today I’m torn between the loyalty I owe
To the outward reality of the Tobacco Shop across the street
And to the inward reality of my feeling that everything’s a dream.

I failed in everything.
Since I had no ambition, perhaps I failed in nothing.
I left the education I was given,
Climbing down from the window at the back of the house.
I went to the country with big plans.
But all I found was grass and trees,
And when there were people they were just like the others.
I step back from the window and sit in a chair. What should I think about?

How should I know what I’ll be, I who don’t know what I am?
Be what I think? But I think of being so many things!
And there are so many who think of being the same thing that we can’t all be it!
Genius? At this moment
A hundred thousand brains are dreaming they’re geniuses like me,
And it may be that history won’t remember even one,
All of their imagined conquests amounting to so much dung.
No, I don’t believe in me.
Insane asylums are full of lunatics with certainties!
Am I, who have no certainties, more right or less right?
No, not even me . . .
In how many garrets and non-garrets of the world
Are self-convinced geniuses at this moment dreaming?
How many lofty and noble and lucid aspirations
–Yes, truly lofty and noble and lucid
And perhaps even attainable–
Will never see the light of day or find a sympathetic ear?
The world is for those born to conquer it,
Not for those who dream they can conquer it, even if they’re right.
I’ve done more in dreams than Napoleon.

I’ve held more humanities against my hypothetical breast than Christ.
I’ve secretly invented philosophies such as Kant never wrote.
But I am, and perhaps will always be, the man in the garret,
Even though I don’t live in one.
I’ll always be the one who wasn’t born for that;
I’ll always be merely the one who had qualities;
I’ll always be the one who waited for a door to open in a wall without doors
And sang the song of the Infinite in a chicken coop
And heard the voice of God in a covered well.
Believe in me? No, not in anything.
Let Nature pour over my seething head
Its sun, its rain, and the wind that finds my hair,
And let the rest come if it will or must, or let it not come.
Cardiac slaves of the stars,
We conquered the whole world before getting out of bed,
But we woke up and it’s hazy,
We got up and it’s alien,
We went outside and it’s the entire earth
Plus the solar system and the Milky Way and the Indefinite.

(Eat your chocolates, little girl,
Eat your chocolates!
Believe me, there’s no metaphysics on earth like chocolates,
And all religions put together teach no more than the candy shop.
Eat, dirty little girl, eat!
If only I could eat chocolates with the same truth as you!
But I think and, removing the silver paper that’s tinfoil,
I throw it on the ground, as I’ve thrown out life.)

But at least, from my bitterness over what I’ll never be,
There remains the hasty writing of these verses,
A broken gateway to the Impossible.
But at least I confer on myself a contempt without tears,
Noble at least in the sweeping gesture by which I fling
The dirty laundry that’s me–with no list–into the stream of things,
And I stay at home, shirtless.

(O my consoler, who doesn’t exist and therefore consoles,
Be you a Greek goddess, conceived as a living statue,
Or a patrician woman of Rome, impossibly noble and dire,
Or a princess of the troubadours, all charm and grace,
Or an eighteenth-century marchioness, decollete and aloof,
Or a famous courtesan from our parent’s generation,
Or something modern, I can’t quite imagine what–
Whatever all of this is, whatever you are, if you can inspire, then inspire me!
My heart is a poured-out bucket.
In the same way invokers of spirits invoke spirits, I invoke
My own self and find nothing.
I go to the window and see the street with absolute clarity.
I see the shops, I see the sidewalks, I see the passing cars,
I see the clothed living beings who pass each other.
I see the dogs that also exist,
And all of this weighs on me like a sentence of exile,
And all of this is foreign, like everything else.)

I’ve lived, studied, loved, and even believed,
And today there’s not a beggar I don’t envy just because he isn’t me.
I look at the tatters and sores and falsehood of each one,
And I think: perhaps you never lived or studied or loved or believed
(For it’s possible to do all of this without having done any of it);
Perhaps you’ve merely existed, as when a lizard has its tail cut off
And the tail keeps on twitching, without the lizard.
I made of myself what I was no good at making,
And what I could have made of myself I didn’t.
I put on the wrong costume
And was immediately taken for someone I wasn’t, and I said nothing and was lost.
When I went to take off the mask,
It was stuck to my face.
When I got it off and saw myself in the mirror,
I had already grown old.
I was drunk and no longer knew how to wear the costume hat I hadn’t taken off.
I threw out the mask and slept in the closet
Like a dog tolerated by the management
Because it’s harmless,
And I’ll write down this story to prove I’m sublime.

Musical essence of my useless verses,
If only I could look at you as something I had made
Instead of always looking at the Tobacco Shop across the street,
Trampling on my consciousness of existing,
Like a rug a drunkard stumbles on
Or a doormat stolen by gypsies and it’s not worth a thing.

But the Tobacco Shop Owner has come to the door and is standing there.
I look at him with the discomfort of a half-twisted neck
Compounded by the discomfort of a half-grasping soul.
He will die and I will die.
He’ll leave his signboard, I’ll leave my poems.
His sign will also eventually die, and so will my poems.
Eventually the street where the sign was will die,
And so will the language in which my poems were written.
Then the whirling planet where all of this happened will die.

On other planets of other solar systems something like people
Will continue to make things like poems and to live under things like signs,
Always one thing facing the other,
Always one thing as useless as the other,
Always the impossible as stupid as reality,
Always the inner mystery as true as the mystery sleeping on the surface.
Always this thing or always that, or neither one thing nor the other.

But a man has entered the Tobacco Shop (to buy tobacco?),
And plausible reality suddenly hits me.
I half rise from my chair–energetic, convinced, human–
And will try to write these verses in which I say the opposite.

I light up a cigarette as I think about writing them,
And in that cigarette I savor a freedom from all thought.
My eyes follow the smoke as if it were my own trail
And I enjoy, for a sensitive and fitting moment,
A liberation from all speculation
And an awareness that metaphysics is a consequence of not feeling very well.
Then I lean back in the chair
And keep smoking.
As long as Destiny permits, I’ll keep smoking.

(If I married my washwoman’s daughter
Perhaps I would be happy.)
I get up from the chair. I go to the window.

The man has come out of the Tobacco Shop (putting change into his pocket?).
Ah, I know him: it’s unmetaphysical Esteves.
(The Tobacco Shop Owner has come to the door.)
As if by divine instinct, Esteves turns around and sees me.
He waves hello, I shout back “Hello, Esteves!” and the universe
Falls back into place without ideals or hopes, and the Owner of the Tobacco Shop
     smiles.

Reflection

Most people imagine darkness as something obvious.

Cruelty.
Violence.
Hatred worn openly enough to recognize from a distance.

But the darker truths usually arrive quieter than that.

Envy disguised as criticism.
Fear disguised as certainty.
Loneliness disguised as superiority.
Self-contempt disguised as perfectionism.
Emptiness disguised as distraction.

That’s why Jung’s quote matters.

If you do not recognize your own darkness, you will spend your life mistaking it for other people.

You will project what you refuse to confront.
Judge what secretly lives in you.
Fear in others what remains unresolved in yourself.

Pessoa understood this kind of fragmentation deeply.

The Tobacco Shop is not simply a poem about alienation. It is about the terrifying complexity of consciousness itself—the feeling of being crowded by versions of yourself, possibilities of yourself, disappointments of yourself.

The speaker stands at the window looking outward, but the real landscape is internal.

Identity splinters.
Meaning blurs.
The self becomes difficult to hold steadily.

And underneath it all sits an uncomfortable realization:

You are not always who you believed yourself to be.

That recognition can either deepen you…
or destroy your ability to tolerate complexity in others.

Because people who fear their own shadow often become obsessed with controlling everyone else’s.

They need certainty.
Purity.
Simple villains.
Simple heroes.

But real human beings are rarely simple.

We are contradictory creatures—capable of tenderness and selfishness, wisdom and denial, compassion and cruelty, often within the same hour.

That does not excuse harm.

But it does make understanding possible.

And understanding is different from innocence.

That’s the mature truth hidden inside both Jung and Pessoa:

Self-knowledge is not about becoming morally spotless.

It is about becoming honest enough to stop lying about what lives inside you.

Only then can you meet other people without illusion.

Reflection Prompts

  • What trait in other people consistently provokes a strong emotional reaction in you?
  • How much of your self-image depends on ignoring parts of yourself?
  • What changes when you stop viewing darkness as something only other people possess?

Poem of the Day – 05212026

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Night Was Done

Mikhail Kuzmin

Night was done. We rose and after 
Washing, dressing,—kissed with laughter,—
After all, the sweet night knows. 
Lilac breakfast cups were clinking 
While we sat like brothers drinking 
Tea,—and kept our dominoes.

And our dominoes smiled greeting, 
And our eyes avoided meeting 
With our dumb lips’ secrecy.
“Faust” we sang, we played, denying
Night’s strange memories, strangely dying,
As though night’s twain were not we.

Reflection

There’s a strange feeling that comes after surviving something difficult.

Not triumph.
Not relief.

Just quiet.

The storm passes, the argument ends, the grief loosens its grip for a moment—and suddenly the silence feels unfamiliar. Almost suspicious. As if some part of you is still waiting for the darkness to return.

That’s the emotional space this poem inhabits.

The night is gone.
But its presence still lingers in the body.

Anyone who has struggled mentally or emotionally understands this feeling. The mind does not immediately trust peace simply because it arrives. After enough hard nights, enough spirals, enough internal battles, calm can feel temporary—like something borrowed rather than something you deserve.

So when morning comes, you don’t always celebrate.

Sometimes you just stare at it quietly, unsure how long it will stay.

That’s what makes this poem feel honest.

It doesn’t force transformation.
It doesn’t pretend dawn solves everything.

It simply acknowledges change.

The darkness was real.
And now, at least for this moment, it has shifted.

There’s humility in that.

Because healing is rarely dramatic. Most of the time, it arrives in small recognitions:

You laughed without forcing it.
You slept through the night.
You answered the message instead of disappearing.
You noticed beauty again without feeling guilty for it.

Tiny things.
But tiny things are often how people return to themselves.

And maybe that’s the deeper truth underneath the poem:

The goal is not to become someone untouched by darkness.

It’s to remember that darkness is not the only atmosphere your life can hold.

Morning does not erase the night.
But it does interrupt it.

Sometimes that interruption is enough to keep going.

Reflection Prompts

  • What “night” in your life lasted longer than others realized?
  • How do you respond when peace finally arrives—do you trust it or brace against it?
  • What small sign tells you that healing may already be happening quietly?

Poem of the Day – 05192026

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Having It out with Melancholy

Jane Kenyon

1947 – 1995

          If many remedies are prescribed
          for an illness, you may be certain
          that the illness has no cure.
                              —A. P. CHEKHOV
                             The Cherry Orchard

1 FROM THE NURSERY
When I was born, you waited
behind a pile of linen in the nursery,
and when we were alone, you lay down
on top of me, pressing
the bile of desolation into every pore.
And from that day on
everything under the sun and moon
made me sad—even the yellow
wooden beads that slid and spun
along a spindle on my crib.
You taught me to exist without gratitude.
You ruined my manners toward God:
“We’re here simply to wait for death;
the pleasures of earth are overrated.”
I only appeared to belong to my mother,
to live among blocks and cotton undershirts
with snaps; among red tin lunch boxes
and report cards in ugly brown slipcases.
I was already yours—the anti-urge,
the mutilator of souls.

2 BOTTLES
Elavil, Ludiomil, Doxepin,
Norpramin, Prozac, Lithium, Xanax,
Wellbutrin, Parnate, Nardil, Zoloft.
The coated ones smell sweet or have
no smell; the powdery ones smell
like the chemistry lab at school
that made me hold my breath.

3 SUGGESTION FROM A FRIEND
You wouldn’t be so depressed
if you really believed in God.
4 OFTEN
Often I go to bed as soon after dinner
as seems adult
(I mean I try to wait for dark)
in order to push away
from the massive pain in sleep’s
frail wicker coracle.

5 ONCE THERE WAS LIGHT
Once, in my early thirties, I saw
that I was a speck of light in the great
river of light that undulates through time.
I was floating with the whole
human family. We were all colors—those
who are living now, those who have died,
those who are not yet born. For a few
moments I floated, completely calm,
and I no longer hated having to exist.
Like a crow who smells hot blood
you came flying to pull me out
of the glowing stream.
“I’ll hold you up. I never let my dear
ones drown!” After that, I wept for days.

6 IN AND OUT
The dog searches until he finds me
upstairs, lies down with a clatter
of elbows, puts his head on my foot.
Sometimes the sound of his breathing
saves my life—in and out, in
and out; a pause, a long sigh. . . .

7 PARDON
A piece of burned meat
wears my clothes, speaks
in my voice, dispatches obligations
haltingly, or not at all.
It is tired of trying
to be stouthearted, tired
beyond measure.
We move on to the monoamine
oxidase inhibitors. Day and night
I feel as if I had drunk six cups
of coffee, but the pain stops
abruptly. With the wonder
and bitterness of someone pardoned
for a crime she did not commit
I come back to marriage and friends,
to pink fringed hollyhocks; come back
to my desk, books, and chair.

8 CREDO
Pharmaceutical wonders are at work
but I believe only in this moment
of well-being. Unholy ghost,
you are certain to come again.
Coarse, mean, you’ll put your feet
on the coffee table, lean back,
and turn me into someone who can’t
take the trouble to speak; someone
who can’t sleep, or who does nothing
but sleep; can’t read, or call
for an appointment for help.
There is nothing I can do
against your coming.
When I awake, I am still with thee.

9 WOOD THRUSH
High on Nardil and June light
I wake at four,
waiting greedily for the first
note of the wood thrush. Easeful air
presses through the screen
with the wild, complex song
of the bird, and I am overcome
by ordinary contentment.
What hurt me so terribly
all my life until this moment?
How I love the small, swiftly
beating heart of the bird
singing in the great maples;
its bright, unequivocal eye.