Gratitude is the confidence in life itself. In it, we feel how the same force
that pushes grass through cracks in the sidewalk invigorates our own life.

—Jack Kornfield

•••

The essence that nudges tiny green bits
upward, searching for light and air
through the smallest sidewalk fissures,

by any name or none, elicits wonder
in me on every walk, as though such
a phenomenon is a rarity,

as if tiny growing things don’t find
ways to enter the world. But I also
think of the ones that don’t or can’t,

the prodigies that didn’t take root,
the ones stopped before they could
appear. Which makes me stop

mid-stride, bend and touch the bit
of life coming through. Which might
be taken for a weed and plucked.

Which, I, too, have plucked, and later
wished I hadn’t. So nowadays I give
the little plants that can a Yay, you!

before walking on, mindful of
the marvel that any of us seeds
landed and grew and thrived,

that, despite everything,
we have somehow flourished
in these lucky, lovely lives.