Transcript

I’m Major Jackson, and this is The Slowdown.

As a young child, when someone handed me a treat, a gift, performed some kindness, my mother would bend over me with her soft eyes and ask, “What do you say?” I’d sheepishly look up at them and speak those words she taught me, “Thank you,” then run off. She’d stand up and beam proudly. Surrounding adults would respond, “What great manners.” And just as my mom trained me to express gratitude, I did the same with my children, a daisy-chain of courtesies.

In a way, my books of poetry can be seen as one big gratitude journal — for all that inspires awe, for all that grounds me. I am not alone. One of my favorite poems is simply titled “Thanks” by Yusef Komunyakaa. The ode, one of my favorite poems, is also a poem of thankfulness.

Those poems are also small notes of appreciation, in aggregate, a love letter to our personal wilderness of beauty, to the forces of good and kindness in the world: a camping trip with friends, mornings full of birdsong, acts of resistance whose aim is a just and equitable society.

Writing such poems cultivates peace in me. It reminds me that life is not all dissatisfaction and disappointments. Reading poems that strike big-hearted notes of the ecstatic have me celebrate my own victories and joys, small things in life that are meaningful, yet unnoticeable to the distracted eye: a child’s hug at the end of bedtime, first sip of steaming soup on a frigid day that fogs your face, the way a friend smiles at a corny joke.

Today’s poem deftly catalogs those unexpected moments and still advances positivity as a social emotion that is beneficial to all.

Act of Gratitude
by Cyrus Cassells

	     from the Catalan of Francesc Parcerisas

Thank you, angel. Thank you,
Demons of the night. 

Thank you, winter,
Season in which the heart burns

Arid tree-trunks of desire. Thank you,
Bracing cold light, nocturnal water.

Thank you, stroke-of-midnight bile, 
Laurel of the earliest hours, hoopoe of dawn.

For what’s odd, unexpected, wild,
For hard-at-work malice and pain, thank you.

For the sum of what we are
And are not,

For all we avoid
And the countless things we crave.

Merci for the lush words
Love and silver,

For yourself and myself.
Thank you for full-on yes and deflating no.

For the ability to give thanks
And for rendering them unnecessary.

Oh, gracias for almighty fear,
For shoring bread and oil,

For getaway night time.
Thank you for lovemaking

At day’s scintillating hem, for the dollar bill
Plucked from the ground,

For your deft hand on my cheek, 
The gush of an ecstatic fountain.

Thank you for your wide-awake eyes and lips,
For crying out my name with joy.

Everlasting thanks, Lord Death,
For your existence,

For making all these things
More vivid inside me—

So very yours,
So beautiful, brimming, and complete.

“Act of Gratitude” by Cyrus Cassells from IS THERE ROOM FOR ANOTHER HORSE ON YOUR HORSE RANCH? © 2024 Cyrus Cassells. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Four Way Books.