Poetry Celebrating life,hope & Joy : Normal Day by Mary Jean Irion*Each day by Wilferd A. Peterson*Excerpts from"A Song of Joys" by Walt Whitman

Music:
Titanium/Pavane(Piano/Cello Cover)-David Guetta/Faure-ThePianoGuys

Normal Day
Mary Jean Irion

A normal day!Holding it in my hand this one last moment,
I have come to see it as more than an ordinary rock.
It is a gem, a jewel.

In time of war,in peril of death, people have dug their hands and faces into the earth and remembered this. In time of sickness and pain, people have buried their faces in pillows and wept for this.
In time of loneliness and separation,people have stretched
themselves taut and waited for this.In time of hunger,
homelessness, and want, people have raised bony hands
to the skies and stayed alive for this. . . .

Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are.
Let me learn from you,love you,bless you before you depart.
Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow.

Let me hold you while I may,for it may not always be so.
One day I shall dig my nails into the earth,or bury my face
in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands
to the sky and want more than all the world your return.
And then I will know what I am now guessing:that you are, indeed, a common rock and not a jewel, but that a common rock made of the very mass substance of the earth in all its strength and plenty puts a gem to shame.
The day is over, and now I will sleep.

Each day
Wilferd A. Peterson

Each day is a lifetime in miniature.
To awaken each morning is to be born again,
to fall asleep at night is to die to the day.
In between waking and sleeping are the golden hours
of the day.What we cannot do for a lifetime we can
do for a daytime.

"Anyone," wrote Robert Louis Stevenson,"can live sweetly, patiently, lovingly,purely,till the sun goes down."
Anyone can hold their temper for a day
and guard the words they speak.
Anyone can carry their burden heroically for one day.
Anyone can strive to be happy for a day
and to spread happiness around.
Anyone can radiate love for a day.

Anyone can rise above fear for a day and meet each new situation with courage.
Anyone can be kind and thoughtful and considerate for a day.
Anyone can endeavor to learn something new each day
and mark some growth...

The supreme art of living is to strive to live each day well...
Live a day at a time and remember that tomorrow is another today.

Look to this day!
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course lie all the verities
and realities of your existence:
The bliss of growth
The glory of action
The splendor of achievement.

For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow is only a vision,
But today well lived makes every yesterday
a dream of happiness
And tomorrow a vision of hope.

Look well, therefore, to this day!
Such is the salutation to the dawn.
Kalidasa,Ancient Sanskrit Poem

Excerpts from"A Song of Joys"
Walt Whitman

O to make the most jubilant song!
Full of music--full of manhood, womanhood, infancy!
Full of common employments--full of grain and trees.
O for the voices of animals-O for the swiftness and balance of fishes!
O for the dropping of raindrops in a song!
O for the sunshine and motion of waves in a song!

O the joy of my spirit--it is uncaged--it darts like lightning!
It is not enough to have this globe or a certain time,
I will have thousands of globes and all time.

O the joy of that vast elemental sympathy which only the human soul is capable of generating and emitting in steady and limitless floods.

O the mother's joys!
The watching,the endurance,the precious love,the anguish,
the patiently yielded life.

O the of increase, growth, recuperation,
The joy of soothing and pacifying,the joy of concord and harmony.

O to go back to the place where I was born,
To hear the birds sing once more,
To ramble about the house and barn
and over the fields once more,
And through the orchard and along the old lanes once more.

O the joy of my soul leaning pois'd on itself,receiving identity through materials and loving them,observing characters and absorbing them,
My soul vibrated back to me from them, from sight, hearing, touch, reason, articulation, comparison, memory,and the like,
The real life of my senses and flesh transcending my senses and flesh, my body done with materials,my sight done with my material eyes,
Proved to me this day beyond cavil that it is not my material eyes which finally see,
Nor my material body which finally loves,walks,laughs,shouts, embraces,procreates.

Yet O my soul supreme!
Knowist thou the joys of pensive thought?
Joys of the free and lonesome heart,the tender,gloomy heart?
Joys of the solitary walk,the spirit bow'd yet proud,the suffering and the struggle?
The agonistic throes,the ecstasies,joys of the solemn musings day or night?
Joys of the thought of Death,the great spheres Time and Space? Prophetic joys of better,loftier love's ideals,the divine wife,
the sweet,eternal,perfect comrade?
Joys all thine own undying one, joys worthy thee O soul.