Today I Can Be Grateful
Dig in, find who you are -
no one can take that away.
I didn’t see that I had everything,
wasn’t even grateful for who I was.
Look at those less fortunate
who feel blessed,
shedding tears of joy -
not surrounded by insanity,
no longer all that bad -
knowing it keeps me hopeful,
grateful for time.
Someday I will ride my horse into the wind
embrace my naked truth
my belief in time to show us the way,
grateful for hope, for opportunity.
What I had was enough.
Hope and gratitude – cornerstone
of living simply.
Like most of the posts on this blog, these words were written by women “Writing Inside” Vermont’s state prison for women. They were assembled from what we call ‘read-back’ lines — those phrases that resonated with the listener when the writer was sharing her writing during our weekly writing circle inside. After everyone reads, we share these lines in a kind of polyphonic chorus or tapestry. Often they come out not unlike this poem. Read-back lines create a natural foundation for a ‘found’ poem such as this.
The specific mood and focus of any given writing session — and therefore the read-back lines and found poem — are determined by the prompts given in class for the fast write with which we start each session. For this particular class, the prompt was to write freely to one or more of the following phrases, gathered from the opening epigraphs: gratitude makes sense of the past . . . creates a vision for tomorrow . . . the simple act of living with hope . . .
