Excerpt from “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude”

Ross Gay is a contemporary American poet who spent an entire year (beginning on his 42nd birthday) writing about joy. As he scribbled his daily observations, he realized that his central question as a poet was “What is this joy?” Some of my favorite Ross Gay poems contain breathtaking images of daily delights.

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Excerpt from “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude” 

By Ross Gay 

Friends, will you bear with me today, 

for I have awakened 

from a dream in which a robin 

made with its shabby wings a kind of veil 

behind which it shimmied and stomped something from the south 

of Spain, its breast aflare, 

looking me dead in the eye 

from the branch that grew into my window, 

coochie-cooing my chin, 

the bird shuffling its little talons left, then right, 

while the leaves bristled 

against the plaster wall, two of them drifting 

onto my blanket while the bird 

opened and closed its wings like a matador 

giving up on murder, 

jutting its beak, turning a circle, 

and flashing, again, 

the ruddy bombast of its breast 

by which I knew upon waking 

it was telling me 

in no uncertain terms 

to bellow forth the tubas and sousaphones, 

the whole rusty brass band of gratitude 

not quite dormant in my belly— 

it said so in a human voice, 

“Bellow forth”— 

and who among us could ignore such odd  

and precise counsel?