Jim's Poem a Day 2026

We all have stones that we roll up the hill each morning, only to see them roll back down  each night, day after day, week after week, and we say, by way of greeting, “How’s your stone rolling going?” And then we reply, “Not too bad, I guess—could be worse.” And we try to distract ourselves with trips to the beach or a museum, but the stone waits for us wherever we go, reminding us of the price of cheating death for another day.

I used to be on a path that led almost certainly toward ill health and dissolution by the time I reached my current age, but now the path stretches just a bit further into the future and I have options about what to do with this bonus time, earned or unearned by choice and grace and circumstance. I have stories to tell and songs to sing, and there’s still time to become less cranky so that, when I’m truly ancient and living in the old folks’ home, people might still want to visit me.

There will be storms—torrents of rain and blasts of wind supercharged by rising ocean  temperatures and ever increasing moisture in the atmosphere. And there will be storms— government-sanctioned violence and waves of corruption and vanishing hard-won freedoms  once taken for granted. And somewhere among the storms we will create a refuge where love heals wounds and resists the deluge of fear.

  No other day has been the same as this day nor will there ever be a day just like today. Only in memory do the hours, days, weeks, months and years fade into dull sameness. And memory is so frail and feeble in the end that it cannot be trusted or counted upon, so all we have during this day is this day itself untidy, unfiltered, unblemished, unvarnished, and entirely enough to give us all we need. Lean mightily into today! Praise and give thanks!

Spirit of life, spirit of creation and sustenance and annihilation, we know that our lives are circumscribed by time and occurrences that we cannot possibly know or understand beforehand, that our departure by death is as mysterious as our arrival by birth, that we can never fully comprehend where we come from or where we go or any of the other great paradoxes of existence. But we do know that, in the end, we lose almost everything— family, friends, careers, homes, memories all fade away at last. And we know that this very moment, and as it passes, *this* moment goes on and on, beginning before us and continuing long after us. We pause now to sense the only thing that is eternal: just now. We pray that, if we remember anything at all at the end of our lives, it might all the love we have experienced throughout our time here, all the love that has brought joy and grief and meaning to us, all the love that has lifted us up, held us tight, and carried us on. Even if we cannot remember our...

There’s more room for empathy  in baseball than in most other sports. There’s enough time to imagine things  from the players’ point of view. As each batter steps to the plate, you put yourself in their shoes and think about what it must be like to see a 99-mile-an-hour fastball coming out of the pitcher’s hand, heading toward the center of the plate and then breaking in toward your hands just as you swing the bat and make contact, and the ball sails over the third baseman’s outstretched glove into left field and rolls down the chalk line toward the wall. And you can feel what it’s like to be the left fielder grabbing the ball barehanded and throwing it with all your strength toward second base, where the shortstop catches it on one bounce and tags the sliding runner just before your foot reaches the bag. And the crowd groans and cheers and gets ready for the next play.

Today I am officially old. Unofficially, of course, I’ve been old for some time; signs have been there for all to see— presbyopia, baldness, forgetfulness strange spots on my skin, bones popping and cracking every time I stand up. I like to think that with farsightedness comes the ability to see the big picture, to not be so caught up in close-up things that I lose sight of what I couldn’t see when I was younger and more impetuous. But it turns out that one is not bestowed with insight automatically with age; rather, I have had to work each day at seeing more deeply into things, into the place where clarity is elusive but where paradox and mystery can be held with a kind of grace that is just there, like air and gravity.

While there is time  enough to live, there is little time  to spare on things that seem to take up  too much time, things that distract  or detract from living  into each moment  as it occurs.

My eyes still filled with sleep, I have not yet been able to focus  on objects in the middle distance, nor can I see small, subtle things, so the only way I know it’s raining is the motion of the ferns as drops fall on their leaves and they nod along in a gentle, arhythmic chorus.

Life goes on, sometimes  longer than is good or desirable,  sometimes not nearly long enough, but even when individual lives end, life itself continues apace; and always someone is dying, someone is being born, and everyone tries to make sense of what happens in between.

My final prayer well may be a prayer  for death to come at last to clear away confusion wrought by living far too long, beyond all sense and hope and joy, beyond remembrance, reason, strength and will to live. And when death comes, it comes at last a friend.

We sometimes speak of “catching our breath,” as if breath were something running away from us, Something eluding our grasp, always just ahead of us, rather than something that moves through us, something that sustains and centers us in this moment. We pause now for a moment of silence to sense our breathing, not to control or corral it, but simply to experience breathing in, breathing out, together, in this place of peace and love. [pause] May we remember to pause and be present to our breathing, to the spirit of life, to this moment just as it is. And in so doing may we return to this place  where we breathe in peace and breathe out love now and always, Amen!  

After a hard rain, an old mulberry tree behind the church fell down and took another tree with it amid a small stand of trees near the backyard property line. Some of the trees predate the church building, which is some 106 years old, and others are newer, scrubbier trees that have grown and thrived, largely unnoticed by anyone and cared for by no one. Still, we deliberate carefully before deciding to remove these trees because they are living things, more firmly rooted and at home in this place than we are, and more deeply connected to all other living things than humans choose to be. And so we breathe and pray.

The last drink I had was 28 years ago at a music festival in North Carolina, where I was absolutely miserable, sneaking drinks from a bottle of vodka, staving off the shakes and pretending  to be sober while wishing I was either dead-drunk or merely dead rather than just half-drunk and half-alive. All these years later, sobriety is still the greatest challenge in the world and also the greatest gift—an absence, yes, as well as a presence I rediscover each day, one precious day at a time.

I mistakenly stumbled into doing work this morning rather than writing a poem, and now my task is to shift my attention away from the the thousands of work things and toward the single blank page before me, awaiting words from the heart of the universe transmitted feebly and lovingly through the filter of my awareness of this one and only moment.

Because I was officiating at yet another memorial service  last Sunday afternoon, I was unable to attend the interfaith  community organizing group’s annual fundraising banquet, but I understand that the Sisters of Joseph, who have been leading the weekly prayer vigil outside the ICE headquarters on Pittsburgh’s South Side, rain or shine, for the past year, were there and danced the electric slide with the same joy and gusto they put into all of their social justice endeavors, proving once again that the revolution *will* include dancing.

It is the time of life for me to savor life instead of madly rushing from thing to thing, to lean into wisdom instead of merely hoarding knowledge, to learn to love life as opposed to resenting all the things of life. 

Our dog is easily spooked by loud noises like the sound of the nail gun used by roofers on the house behind ours the other day. Going out for a walk, we made it only as far as the driveway before she froze in fear and refused to go further, despite my cajoling. It’s kind of like the way I feel when I walk into a room full of people chatting happily.

We give thanks for the newness of this and every day, for the chance to begin, if not with an entirely clean slate, then with one clean enough to give us space to breathe, to ponder, to center ourselves, to embrace a fresh start. We give thanks for the eternal mystery of this moment in which everything exists and unfolds all at once— even memory existing only now, enmeshed in the present, surrounded by constant, continuous, everlasting change. Let us pause to sense the nearness and newness of now. May we be present to beginnings even amid endings. May we be open to all the moments of our lives. And may we dwell in breathtaking wonder now and always. Amen!

What wondrous symmetry there is in life sometimes! Immediately after the funeral, we received news of the birth of a baby and a photo of her swaddled and sleeping soundly, entirely new and utterly alive.

There are times when  nothing seems easy, when one gets through  by thinking of everything as either done or not done,  and checking off boxes, and that’s OK, but it’s also good to breathe in between things, breathe and be present before moving on.

There are ways  of using words  that point  to something  beyond words; certain skill is necessary, but even more important is being immersed in that which is beyond words.

Each leaf flutters  in the wind, every  branch bends, and  whole trees sway. Each part stays  connected to the others and to the earth,  open to sun and rain, a part of everything, apart from nothing.

Finding myself overwhelmed by all the things calling out for my attention, I cannot focus on any of them until I see a single spherical blossom of lightest purple outside the window. I gaze at it for a moment, breathe in, breathe out, and find myself again.

For years, our across-the-street neighbor  Nancy worked almost every day spring through autumn keeping her front yard  meticulously beautiful with lovely beds  of flowers and flowering shrubs and trees  all well-groomed, neat and trimmed. She puttered for hours and spent at least as much time pausing and looking as she did digging, trimming, fertilizing and pruning. Since she died a few years ago, her daughter has taken over caring for her mom’s yard. She spends hours doing yard work, but she seldom pauses to look as Nancy did, so everything looks neat but not beautiful.

It was the Carmina Burana last night so the timpani player got a workout at the Akron Symphony Orchestra season-ending grand finale, providing  thunder beneath neo-Gothic bombast and a 100-voice choir alternating between whispering and belting. But the most remarkable moment was when the coloratura soprano, seated and silent for the first 40 minutes of the piece, rose and, with such splendid tenderness, placed one high note atop another, seemingly without strain, but just opening her mouth and letting pure beauty emerge and encircle each concert-goer in thrall, hearts full, tearful, thankful for such breathtaking,  soulshaking artistry.

  Even though the day is gray and drops of rain remain on windows, I hear the clear bright birdsongs sung among deep arboreal sheen of green.

It is said that few have seen the face of God, but I see it almost every day in the faces of all who weep, all who laugh, all who mourn, all who rejoice. And I have seen the face of God in the face of my mother.

For the first four or five years after we planted it, the dogwood failed to bloom, but this year each branch bursts with blossoms of palest pink that faded to white after several days of hard rain. Nature is more patient than I am. Beauty is born of such patience.

May or March? It’s sometimes hard to tell. It’s Pittsburgh after all, and spring comes and goes and comes again. Cold rain today, sunshine tomorrow, and always a sense that,  like corporations, weather can’t be trusted.  

Leaves arrive after a long winter and fill all that empty space with green surpassing imagination and memory—green that sings spring in harmony with light and rain, a song I learn each year and then forget when leaves fall.

Look up! Entire worlds exist  up above your downward gaze— worlds of branches and leaves, worlds of falcons and finches, worlds of cumulus and cirrus, worlds of gusts and breezes, worlds of distant imaginings that might just lift you higher even unto the holy mountain.

Give thanks for this day! Give thanks for blue sky and clouds! Give thanks for a world turned green! Give thanks for the songs of birds! Give thanks for chilly spring breezes! Give thanks for flowering trees! Give thanks for all that can be seen, heard, touched, smelled, tasted on this day, for there may be no other! Pause for a moment of silence now to give thanks. May gratitude inform our every thought. May gratitude guide all of our actions. And may gratitude become for us as natural as the beating of our hearts. Amen!