I’ve been thinking about this poem ever since I found it on The Vale of the Soul-Making. The way ordinary objects around us are choreographed for our comfort and pleasure. How too often we take them for granted. Fail to appreciate these simple offerings, the way they bless our lives. How they are imbued with a kind of love. And how our days might be lightened and deepened if we took note of such things.

A simple thank you would do.

The Patience of Ordinary Things

It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they’re supposed to be.
I’ve been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

—Pat Schneider, “The Patience of Ordinary Things,” Another River: New and Selected Poems. © Amherst Writers and Artists Press, 2005.