James Crews

After Despair

Little by little, I feel myself
called back to the world. Holes
left by the woodpecker in a dead tree
console me with their evidence
of another living thing seeking what
it needs to survive. And mushrooms
that push up through layers of leaves
like huts hastily built against
the coming cold. Blade of moon
hung on the nail of a star in the night,
and the neighbor I pull over to greet
the next morning, how she reaches out
to rub my arm through the open window.

Essential Gratitude

If you have a bed and roof over your head,
count yourself blessed. No matter that
the mattress squeaks each time you move,
no matter that someone lit firecrackers
outside your window last night—it was not
artillery fire or the crackling of actual
flames devouring the whole neighborhood.
Pull the comforter up to your sleepless face
and thank its lumpy bulk. There is a walk
by the water waiting for you this afternoon
with the man you love. There is a glass
of thick espresso blended with whole milk,
which will leave a film across your lips.
Kiss the cup of your strange and lucky life,
then drink from it, and drink from it
for as long as you can.

All Holding Is Medicine

A cold, smooth river stone placed
in the palm, or the swaddled form
of an infant nestled in waiting arms:
All holding is medicine for us.
The way, for instance, I come up
behind my husband at the table
and lay my head on his shoulder
and he lets it rest there for a while,
or how I used to take the heavy
grocery bags out of my father’s
shaking hands: I can carry that for you.
Isn’t this what we all long to know,
that we do not labor alone under
our burdens?

Helper

I am thinking today about that man
across the aisle from me in seat 7A,
who kept helping people heft their
heavy luggage into overhead bins,
unbuckling his seat belt and rising
more than once to squeeze someone’s
roller bag into the narrow spaces
we had to share. He seemed to care
about each passenger who passed by,
sweaty and disheveled, breathless
from having raced across the airport
to the gate, and each time he helped,
the smile lingered longer on his face
until each of us in the rows around him
felt held in the glow of his easy grace.

Mud-Puddling

I want to love my life just as it is—
the cobwebbed corners and rumpled bed,
my sweaty yoga mat still unrolled
across the floor, the color rubbed off
where I rest my head each morning.
Let me love the orderly and the messy—
my unwashed and salt-stained car,
the cracked planter left out in the cold,
this regret that still fills me years after
my mother’s passing because I wasn’t
there at her bedside when she died, because
I couldn’t do more to save her. Let me be
like the butterflies, sipping from wet soil,
dung, and carrion, drawing nutrients
from actual blood, sweat, and tears—
what we call mud-puddling. Let me stay
in love with my sorrow today, with anger,
fatigue, and every fruit fly rising up
from the sweet and rotting compost
I forgot to take out.

James Crews is the author of Turning Toward Grief: Reflections on Life, Loss & Appreciation; Breathing Room: Poems of Rest &; Retreat; and editor of several bestselling poetry anthologies, including Love Is for All of Us, a collection of LGBTQ+ love poems co-edited with his husband, Brad Peacock. He has also edited The Wonder of Small Things (winner of the New England Book Award), The Path to Kindness (winner of the Nautilus Award), and How to Love the World, which has sold over 100,000 copies to date. He has been featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, and in People Magazine, The Boston Globe, The New York Times Magazine, The Sun Magazine, and The Washington Post. James lives with his husband on forty rocky acres in Vermont that they are restoring to a habitat for pollinators and native species. jamescrews.net