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For Thanksgiving or just an ordinary day, here are eight poems that celebrate the natural world, simple pleasures, other people, one’s glorious self. All free for downloading.

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“This Morning,” Raymond Carver

This morning was something. A little snow
lay on the ground. The sun floated in a clear
blue sky. The sea was blue, and blue-green,
as far as the eye could see.

“Crossing,” Jericho Brown

About this poem, Jericho Brown says: “I wrote “Crossing” in the midst of a depressive state about which I have a great deal of unnecessary and misplaced shame. That shame has to do with the fact that I’m a person who understands the power of gratitude.”

“The World Has Need of You,” Ellen Bass

What if you felt the invisible
tug between you and everything?

“The Failure of Navigation in the Valley,” Kazim Ali

No body is fixed in position no one can be known
Still I am read by satellites my tendency extrapolated

“Gift,” Czesław Milosz

A day so happy.
Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden.

“Ode to Sleeping in My Clothes,” Ross Gay

it is, in fact,
a great source of happiness,

“Psalm for Riding a Plane,” Mary Karr

            Tonight this silver plane is permitted
to bear me in its belly through a black wipe of sky.

“Do you find it hard to live?,” Harmony Holiday

I mean to really live? Kick a spook in the stomach and commit to
yourself and not be committed.

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Resources

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Ploughshares, Vol. 11, No. 4, International Writing (1985), p. 81
Ploughshares
Christianity and Literature, Vol. 68, No. 3, Special Issue: Poetics/Praxis (June 2019), pp. 454-455
The Johns Hopkins University Press
The American Poetry Review, Vol. 40, No. 2 (MARCH/APRIL 2011), p. 25
Old City Publishing, Inc.
Poetry, Vol. 210, No. 4 (JULY/AUGUST 2017), pp. 360-361
Poetry Foundation
World Literature Today, Vol. 73, No. 4, Celebrating Czesław Miłosz (Autumn, 1999), p. 692
Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma
The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 53, No. 1 (SPRING 2012), pp. 40-41
The Massachusetts Review, Inc.
Ploughshares, Vol. 42, No. 1 (Spring 2016), p. 80
Ploughshares
Poetry, Vol. 211, No. 1 (OCTOBER 2017), p. 47
Poetry Foundation