With Gratitude

Today we will take a look at "Ode to Buttoning and Unbuttoning My Shirt" by Ross Gay and talk about Imagery in Poetry Email all inquiries to BasementPoetryPod@gmail.com Link to Poem: https://onbeing.org/poetry/ode-to-buttoning-and-unbuttoning-my-shirt/ Ode to Buttoning and Unbuttoning My Shirt by Ross Gay Listen No one knew or at least I didn’t know they knew what the thin disks threaded here on my shirt might give me in terms of joy this is not something to be taken lightly the gift of buttoning one’s shirt slowly top to bottom or bottom to top or sometimes the buttons will be on the other side and I am a woman that morning slipping the glass through its slot I tread differently that day or some of it anyway my conversations are different and the car bomb slicing the air and the people in it for a quarter mile and the honeybee’s legs furred with pollen mean another thing to me than on the other days which too have been drizzled in this simplest of joys in this world of spaceships and subatomic this and that two maybe three times a day some days I have the distinct pleasure of slowly untethering the one side from the other which is like unbuckling a stack of vertebrae with delicacy for I must only use the tips of my fingers with which I will one day close my mother’s eyes this is as delicate as we can be in this life practicing like this giving the raft of our hands to the clumsy spider and blowing soft until she lifts her damp heft and crawls off we practice like this pushing the seed into the earth like this first in the morning then at night we practice sliding the bones home.