Pleasures

I haven't written in a week.
Today is no exception.
I read something in the NYT yesterday -- that basically said, if your not functioning, that's ok.
OK.
But still -- the way to writing is simply to write...

Here is one of my very favorite poems by Bertolt Brecht:

Pleasures

First look from morning's window

The rediscovered book
Fascinated faces
Snow, the change of the seasons
The newspaper
The dog
Dialectics
Showering, swimming
Old music
Comfortable shoes
Comprehension
New music
Writing, planting
Traveling
Singing
Being friendly

I posted it not long ago for a daily poem series I'm doing for a yoga studio I teach at... Someone said, it's kind of optimistic for Brecht...

Where does optimism come from? 

Where does the focus on gratitude for the moment come from?

I used to teach this poem to my students -- I remember one student calling it corny (though I think they used a far more current term that needed then to be translated to my own generational lingo). I asked -- well, would you feel differently if you knew the person had just survived a war?

I also keep thinking about Love in the Time of Cholera. 

I keep thinking ___ in the time of the Pandemic.

Ok... here are the prompts.

Littles:

write a poem that is a list of the things that you love in your day. Try to be as specific as possible. So if you think, mom, is there something about your mom? is it the way she smiles when she tickles you? is it the way the dog kisses your face?

Think about senses -- the things you see hear touch taste and smell.

Middles:

Write a poem that is a list of things you love.

Be honest.

Be surprising.

Be relentless in rooting out cliches. I always think that cliches are an opportunity -- look -- you get to write more there!

Notice the range in the Brecht poem -- some of the list is about writing -- but some is about the world -- and then he comes to relationship.

A great poet friend of mine once said, sometimes we get really big when we should get really small... notice if you are using any big concepts and try to be very very specific.

Bigs:

Notice how there is a sense of time in this poem. He does this without the usual means of syntax and grammar...

Notice how many senses are involved (he wrote another one "To Eat of Meat Joyously")

As you write your list, isn't it important that we, at this moment, remember that some things don't change...

the row of tulips at the neighbors hedge

the way an old friend laughs at the same things 

writing to strangers

Write a poem that is a list of things you take pleasure in. Today.

Also (or, Or), write a poem _______ in the Time of the Pandemic.