Ordinary Things

 

I am always moved by poems that celebrate the small, ordinary joys. Natalie Goldberg is a master at writing about the ordinary, in a way that allows us to see the hidden depths beneath the seemingly simple words.

“Writing is the willingness to see," she writes. “In writing with detail, you are turning to face the world. It is a deeply political act, because you are not just staying in the heat of your own emotions, you are offering up some good solid bread for the hungry.

“I write … because I am a woman trying to stand up in my life. I write out of hurt and trying to make that hurt okay, how to make myself strong, and come home." These quotes are taken from her book Let the Whole Thundering World Come Home, a memoir about her battle with cancer, a truly wonderful read.

"The deepest secret in our heart of hearts is that we are writing because we love the world,” she says. One feels this love, this gratitude, in the following poem by Ms Goldberg:

COFFEE WITH MILK

It is very deep to have a cup of tea
Also coffee in a white cup
with milk
a hand to go around the cup
and a mouth to open and take it in
It is very deep and very good to have a heart
Do not take the heart for granted
it fills with blood and lets blood out

Good to have this chair to sit in
with these feet on the floor
while I drink this coffee
in a white cup
To have the air around us to be in
To fill our lungs and empty them like weeping
this roof to house us
the sky to house the roof in endless blue
To be in the Midwest
with the Atlantic over there
and the Pacific on our other side

It is good this cup of coffee
the milk in it
the cows who gave us this milk
this
simple as a long piece of grass

Natalie Goldberg
from Top of My Lungs, 2002



“Celebrate the ordinary: white coffee cups, sparrows, thin ham sandwiches,” says Natalie, whose best advice to a writer is to pick up the pen and write whatever comes, without censoring ourselves.

And...this, from Mary Oliver:

PRAYING

It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

Wow. Mary Oliver always nails it.

For your prompt, look around you. Select some small ordinary thing you rarely give much thought to and include it somehow in your poem. Let’s celebrate the ordinary, the small treasures, pleasures and comforts that surround us.