bliss in the mailbox

a few weeks ago i went to my mailbox and pulled out a tidy envelope from dear lia. enclosed were two poems that have virtually carried me through ever since. this one took my breath away:

little things

After she's gone to camp, in the early
evening I clear Liddy's breakfast dishes
from the rosewood table, and find a small
crystallized pool of maple syrup, the
grains standing there, round, in the night, I
rub it with my fingertip
as if I could read it, I wonder why
I think of my father, of the beautiful blood--red glass
in his hand, or his black hair gleaming like a
broken-open coal. I think I learned to
love the little things about him
because of all the things
I could not love, no one could, it would be wrong to.
So when I fix on this tiny image of resin
or sweep together with the heel of my hand a pile of my son's
sunburn peels like
insect wings, where I peeled his back the night before
camp, I am doing something I learned early to do, I am
paying attention to small beauties,
whatever I have--as if it were our duty to
find things to love, to bind ourselves to this world.

-Sharon Olds

a few days before lia's envelope, i got a brown package from amanda. enclosed was this marvel of a poem:

hate blows a bubble of despair into
hugeness world system universe and bang
--fear buries a tomorrow under woe
and up comes yesterday most green and young

pleasure and pain are merely surfaces
(one itself showing,itself hiding one)
life's only and true value neither is
love makes the little thickness of the coin

comes here a man would have from madame death
nevertheless now and without winter spring?
she'll spin that spirit her own fingers with
and give him nothing (if he should not sing)

how much more than enough for both of us
darling. And if i sing you are my voice,

-e.e. cummings

and this is why i love us. thank you my dear, dear friends for keeping me afloat and loving me.