Jim's Poem a Day 2026

The grass keeps on growing no matter how I might be feeling, which is both reassuring and problematic. It is good to know that the natural world continues apace, regardless of my ups and downs, my frailties and infirmities. But every now and then, I wish it were a bit more sympathetic and might just slow down.

Global corporatization, hyper-charged in America, results in dehumanization in every conceivable way. One simple error can result in weeks of waiting, hours of following up by phone or text after receiving   indecipherable letters and mysterious and troubling voicemail messages and warnings that you must respond *now* but the entire system is set up to be as non-responsive and frustrating as possible so that  the powers that be— banks, insurers healthcare  conglomerates, pharmaceutical companies hang on to your money as long as possible. They say they’re all about customer service, but the only thing they deliver is profit for shareholders while the people on the other end of the phone line are tiring and dying.

In the spirit of the imprecatory Psalms, which curse the individuals and systems responsible for violence, murder and war, to move us from righteous indignation to heartfelt lament and radical solidarity, during the next National Day of Bible Reading, let us remember the words of Psalm 10: O Lord, you will hear the desire of the meek; you will strengthen their heart; you will incline your ear to do justice for the orphan and the oppressed, so that those from earth may strike terror no more.

Now and then we have brushes with our own frailty and mortality, glimpses of what it might be like to be really old and near the end when we start to lose control of any and all bodily functions. It helps to have people who care. It helps to have competent helpers. It helps to have memories of love. 

The last thing I remember before I passed out was trying to will myself into not passing out, but it seemed inevitable as my vision began blurring and tunnelling and my ears began ringing, and I could tell that Mary was saying something to me and waiting for me to respond but the ringing made it impossible to hear and I was afraid that, if I tried to speak, I’d lose my concentration and pass out, but out I went just the same. But it didn’t seem like death, and it wasn’t. It was just a frail old human being struggling with being overheated and having a stomach bug. The thing I’ll most remember is the absolutely remarkable kindness that everyone showed me. It turns out that there is some grace in the world, and sometimes we may rest safely in its arms.

Thank God for being alive, for consciousness, for the gift of awareness, for human community, for the love that cuts through everything else and lifts and heals all that is ill or faint-hearted, for the beauteous summer day and the clouds and grass and trees and dogs and this moment of being grateful, even when things aren’t great! Set aside the quest to figure everything out, mortal, you cannot know nor can you ever know what you think you’re capable of knowing. Your task is this: to be grateful now, to be kind when you can, to sing songs that lift the soul and drift upward into the heavens where they sweeten the sun.

What is gone in the end  is fleeting to begin with,  is ephemeral as air currents, is eventually a memory of something that cannot quite be recalled but felt like the thought of breeze brushing against one’s skin without context of place or time or superimposed categorization or order, so maybe it’s not really so much gone as absorbed, lingering like music weeks after a concert when notes still resonate somewhere but  the tune is just out of reach.

I haven’t read a weather forecast but I know it will be hot just the same. Already on this early June day, the sun seems a more intense and slightly hazy summery yellow  than spring’s clear fresh sunshine. And the blue sky has faded a bit from purest azure to the shade of one of my pale blue work shirts that has been washed perhaps a hundred times or more. And the grass seems to be calling out for more water even though it rained not that long ago. It will be hot, but I can picture the moment when the heat will break and drops of rain will streak my face, as cool and healing as a forest stream. But today it will just be hot.

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!