☀️ The Daily Boost #895

Pull up a chair

The Daily Boost (published weekdays) is one of the newsletters of The Raft, the online community of author Phyllis Cole-Dai. We Rafters ride the river of life buoyed by music, poetry, and other arts, plus water-drops of wisdom. Most everything here is free, but patrons (paid subscribers) get some special perks as a gesture of gratitude.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

I SING THEREFORE WE SING
Tryphena Yeboah

I need you to understand:
my joy is something you can wear, too.
Throw it over your head like a blessing bestowed,
keep it wrapped around your body in the cold nights.
In your loneliness, I am there. Warmth is love.
Love is as open as the mouth of God and we can both feast.
A big table only means I have more food for myself and you, too,
and asks why do you sit so far away? Pull up a chair.
Bitterness scratches its body until it’s sore.
Walks around the room pointing at everything
it wished it owned. As if two hearts couldn’t leap
over the joy of one and two voices in an empty room
were incapable of making music. As if, should I begin to grow
out of myself, my stretched hands wouldn’t make your loneliness
lose its name. I say this with love:
a joy that is shared never runs out and my hands stay open.


(from A Mouthful of Home from New-Generation African Poets)

(My thanks to Tryphena Yeboah, via Recovering Words.)

The Gentle Nudge

• ANYTIME: Lay a blessing stone here. (Learn about our blessing-stone practice at this link.)

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