My life, like a poem, is small and enormous.
—poet Maggie Smith

Enormous in that we all contain multitudes,
to paraphrase another poet,

contradictions, he mentioned, too,
as in living while dying,

or perhaps it’s the other way around,
as I walk in the open air

the day after the day of thanks,
continuously giving thanks,

as I do these days. I think of
Whitman celebrating humanity:

For every atom belonging to me
as good belongs to you.

Small, infinitesimal, the atoms,
the liminal moments of

in-between-ness, the half-awakeness
of trying to let sleep find me

in the house of my childhood,
dozing in the chair in the family

room near my mother, who
awakens every hour.

In the waning hours of this night,
of her long life, the veil is so thin

that each of us reaches through
to touch the mystery—

I and this mystery here we stand—

every breath a prayer of
gratitude, for this life,

for this time—even when
the body is not behaving as

it should, as it has. Even as
her exhaustion finds me,

I remind myself not to lose
the enormity of these moments,

of our shared atoms, these snippets
of grace that feel like a poem,

and to write them down.
Like this.

•••

Quoted lines from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” from “Leaves of Grass” (1892 edition), a book published in 1855 that he kept editing and re-editing for the rest of his life.