Poem: "You Can't Take It With You"

What’s Bringing Me Joy:

Right now, something bringing me a very simple kind of joy, is reading an old Nancy Drew book–The Clue of the Whistling Bagpipes. This is the 41st book in the Nancy Drew series. A fun fact about the Nancy Drew books is that they were all written by several authors–though they were all published under the pen name Carolyn Keene. Anyway, there is something very comforting about reading a Nancy Drew book–It takes me back to the way I felt when reading a good chapter book in elementary school.

A Poem: “You Can’t Take It With You”

You can’t take it with you

Though that empty road 

Is your heaven

And those legs

Can still run. 

You can’t take it with you 

Though you could step

Right back 

Into that last day—

Black skirt, new shoes, two households diverged.

You can’t take it with you

Though the house 

Is still your house

Of course it is

Who else would live there? 

Who else would know to cut the rose bush

Down to the bones. 

Only then will it bloom

Again. 

You can’t take it with you

Though you know by heart 

How the seasons turn there

The blue heron hiding

The fields burning

The light slanting through 

Your one small window. 

You can’t take it with you 

No matter how hard you try

No matter how many corners you turn

You find that grief

Is a slow drip sometimes 

Catching you off guard

When the banks are swollen. 

You can’t take it with you 

This is a secret 

No one tells 

But everyone carries.

A cruel burden,

Perhaps. 

Or the yoke of love. 

Thanks for reading this edition of The Friday Joy Blog! If you’d like to connect, leave a comment below or e-mail me at fridayjoyblog@gmail.com. And if you liked this post, please share it with others!

Until next time, keep looking for joy, big and small.

-Beth