Day 6, Appreciation

What if our assignment, should we choose to accept it, is to love everything we love, more than we ever did before. In detail. With great specific attention. Fortunately, we have a little time now. We could spend it that way. 

I did actually see Sue for a few moments today. I drove over to her house to collect some medicine I left there, which I now need to keep at my place. She left it for me in a bag I can wash and sanitize. I picked it up without going nearer to her than six feet. I actually made this photo earlier this month, but I processed it today, and it is what is foremost in my mind today. Maybe this poem explains it. 

An Old Story

We were made to understand it would be
Terrible. Every small want, every niggling urge,
Every hate swollen to a kind of epic wind.

Livid, the land, and ravaged, like a rageful
Dream. The worst in us having taken over
And broken the rest utterly down.

A long age
Passed. When at last we knew how little
Would survive us—how little we had mended

Or built that was not now lost—something
Large and old awoke. And then our singing 
Brought on a different manner of weather.

Then animals long believed gone crept down
From trees. We took new stock of one another,
We wept to be reminded of such color.

—Tracy K. Smith, poet laureate of the USA, 2017-2019.

We took new stock of one another. What if our job, in these precious days of quiet, of blank appointment calendars and empty sidewalks, is to appreciate more than ever? What if that's all we need to do? What if that's enough?