I lost a friend of 40+ years last week, part of a season of loss and change and gratitude. We all have those seasons. So as I pondered a Thanksgiving-appropriate poem for the box, I was glad to receive the writer Suleika Jaouad’s weekly newsletter and its reminder of Ross Gay’s “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude.” The excerpt she included, and which I include here, comes from the close of the poem and contains that sense of how the shortness of time is central to our ability to dive deeply into living. And diving deeply also means saying thank you, which I do today. Happy Thanksgiving, friends.
(Cool video of Gay reading the full poem with music from Bon Iver. Yes.)
“what do you think
this singing and shuddering is,
what this screaming and reaching and dancing
and crying is, other than loving
what every second goes away?”
