Draft in the author’s style. This poem was written for Poet of Uplift to sit beside the author’s own readings, and is waiting for the author’s review. The commentary is a working draft too.
Yesterday has slipped away like water through my hand,
And tomorrow is a story that has not yet been planned.
But today is here and warm, like a loaf fresh from the oven,
And I hold it in my palms like a treasure I've been given.
So I will taste the morning, and the coffee, and the breeze,
And the laughter of the neighbour, and the humming of the bees.
I will listen to the ones I love as though it's for the last,
And I'll give them all my presence, not my hurry or my past.
I will do the work before me, with a full and open heart,
For the joy is in the doing, not the finish, not the start.
That is why they call it present, for it is a gift to hold,
And it's wrapped in every sunrise, and it's worth its weight in gold.
Poet of Uplift · Hear it on the channel ↗
Commentary
This poem plays on the word “present,” which means both now and a gift. It asks the reader to open today the way one opens a present.
“Yesterday has slipped away like water through my hand, and tomorrow is a story that has not yet been planned.” But “today is here and warm, like a loaf fresh from the oven,” and the speaker holds it like “a treasure I’ve been given.” The speaker will “taste the morning, and the coffee, and the breeze.”
The speaker will “listen to the ones I love” and give “all my presence, not my hurry or my past.” The work at hand will be done “with a full and open heart, for the joy is in the doing.” The poem ends: “that is why they call it present, for it is a gift to hold.”