Measuring Specific Gratitude

SOME THINGS THE WORLD GAVE by Mary Oliver

1
Times in the morning early
when it rained and the long gray
buildings came forward from darkness
offering their windows for light.

2
Evenings out there on the plains
when sunset donated farms
that yearned so far to the west that the world
centered there and bowed down.

3
A teacher at a country school
walking home past a great marsh
where ducks came gliding in --
she saw the boy out hunting and waved.

4
Silence on a hill where the path ended
and then the forest below
moving in one long whisper
as evening touched the leaves.

5
Shelter in winter that day --
a storm coming, but in the lee
of an island in a cover with friends --
oh, little bright cup of sun.

 

Alfalfa Fields in St. Denis, Seurat
 

I was looking for a poem on gratitude to post for this Thanksgiving week Mary Oliver Monday when I came across this little gem.  What I particularly like about this poem is its particularities.  So often when people talk about the things for which they are grateful they paint their canvas of blessings with large brush strokes-- family, friends, health, freedom, community, creation.  In this poem, however, gratitude is conveyed in precise points of color like a painting by Seurat or Pisarro.  Viewed together as a whole, they make up the portrait of a lifetime of awareness and gratitude.

I've been thinking about these particular moments as measurements of specific gratitude.  If you're like me, you probably learned about specific gravity in high school but chances are you don't remember much about it because unlike figuring out percentages (which comes in handy when hitting the seasonal sales at Lord & Taylor), determining the specific gravity of an object is a skill you've yet to use in life. But somehow it's an idea that seems relevant to this poem.

If I see my daily life as the standard material, particular moments become the substances being tested.  On days that I'm at my most dense, some of the lighter moments in life don't even break the surface.  I don't notice the sea of stars in the clear winter sky.  The encouraging words of a friend go in one ear and out the other.  I take for granted the warm bed I climb into each night.  But at other times the color blue of the autumn sky stops me in my tracks.  Witnessing a stranger offering a helping hand to a neighbor moves me to tears.  I savor every sip of a good cup of Earl Grey.  Gratitude settles in my soul like led sinking in 39.2°F distilled water.  

Haymakers Resting, Pisarro

Maybe then, it isn't so much those moments being measured as my life.  I don't know the scientific term for testing my own density on any given day but in spiritual terms I think it's called awareness.