how to love the world

 

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The first of a year’s abundance of dandelions
is this single kernel of bright yellow
dropped on our path by the sun, sensing
that we might need some marker to help us
find our way through life, to find a path
over the snow-flattened grass that was
blade by blade unbending into green,
on a morning early in April, this happening
just at the moment I thought we were lost
and I’d stopped to look around, hoping
to see something I recognized. And there
it was, a commonplace dandelion, right
at my feet, the first to bloom, especially
yellow, as if pleased to have been the one,
chosen from all the others, to show us the way.


—Ted Kooser
Dandelion
How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope

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Two days of an icy prairie fog
and every blade of grass, and twig, 
and branch, and every stretch of wire, barb, post and staple, 
is a knot or a thread in a lace
of the purest white. To walk
is like finding your way
through a wedding dress, the sky
inside it cold and satiny;
no past, no future, just the now
all breathless. Then a red bird,
like a pinprick, changes everything.


—Ted Kooser
Hoar Frost

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Today I celebrate with all of you,
The miracle of sunlight,
The humble joy of being and breath
And the mystery and grace of each new day.


—Vincent VanGogh
The Field Next to the Other Road

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