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The book The House of the World has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and is now available on Amazon.

In Gratitude That You Exist Li-Young Lee

My dear poet.
Every day you build a house
for me. A poem
which is your soul,
a place in the zenith of the sky.
A lucent opening of your heart
to walls fashioned from
the fragments of your life.
So similar the human condition.
The halls, rooms, windows
that hold our destinies
of grief and love.
Our remarkable atoms
of beauty and tenderness.

A longing here,
a word said there,
wheels and wind,
lullabies of mother and sister,
the black petal little brother,
the altering fates of war,
the catastrophe of ends.
Each poem finds its place.
Oh yes! I say,
seeing how and where that
house is built,
another burned, or blown away.
Human destiny that rises
from the earth of home,
amid love and murder,
and the rose that rises
from the ashes.
Swans, the color of a cloud.

You, as time begets,
composing your life
so brothers and sisters
like yourself,
can see themselves described,
and put into a shelter
of arches, ceilings open
to the rain,
closets of coats and paper,
which hold thoughts
given to me and others.
A haven,
a hand to hold,
a place to find refuge in,
and myself find an apple
fallen to the ground.
Childhood so in league,
and age profound with seasons
put in a book of life’s bouquets.

Published inIndex of all Poems