“Unsent Message to My Brother in His Pain”

What I love about this poem by Leon Stokesbury is that it surprises me on every read with its newness. I think surprise and newness are just gratitude you didn’t have to work for. Listen to me. I have read this poem many times over 20 years – stumbling upon it periodically in a textbook I bought for some class I probably got a C in – and every time I am struck. It is as good as seeing thick clouds muscle themselves in a shell-pink sky before flowering into a lightning storm. I’ll never get tired of such spectacle. Listen to me. Every day there is something new or even old that’s worth taking another look: a hot meal cooked with wine, a companion whose face in repose promises the possibility of true rest, listen to me: the storm clouds, again, always, the storm clouds. I am grateful often to be surprised by my own gratitude, and I do find myself sometimes pleading with others to listen to me. It seems important to tell you there are things all around as good as this poem.

Read the poem here.