Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude

The poem begins with the poet asking his audience to “bear with me” (Line 1), as he answers his call to express his experience. He recounts a “dream in which a robin” (line 3) has come to him. This has caused an “awaken[ing]” that appears to be both literal and symbolic. The bird has confronted the poet, “looking me dead in the eye” (Line 7) and sitting on a branch “coochie-cooing my chin” (Line 9), asking him to let others know what to pay attention to. This helps to express the belief that the poet has an important message to deliver both for himself and for us. The bird wants the poet to “bellow forth” (Line 22, Line 26) his “whole rusty brass band of gratitude” (Line 23). The use of the word “rusty” clearly indicates that this particular “band” (Line 23) has not played for a while and must be revived. It is, Gay reveals, “not quite dormant” (Line 24). He finds he cannot “ignore [the robin’s] odd / and precise counsel” (Line 28).

The “bellowing forth” begins with a town-crier effect: “Hear ye! hear ye!” (Line 29) the poet shouts to the reader. However, this is not a completely happy “holler” (Line 30) as the poet immediately acknowledges, although playfully, that he has “hauled tons—by which I don’t mean lots, I mean tons — of cowshit” (Line 31). In other words, his “gratitude” (Line 23) is not without pain or hardship. This acknowledgement is as important as the pure noticing of pleasure. The poet’s shoveling of “dung” (Line 37) full of “swales of maggots” (Line 32) is a repetitive task that happens “again and again” (line 38). Through the metaphor Gay implies that unpleasant things in life constantly occur, but “an orchard’ (Line 40) can grow from this dirt, this “furrowing” (Line 41) and “hauling” (Line 42) and “sweating” (Line 43). When “two years later” (Line 44) a “baby” (Line 47) packs down the dirt around a “liberty apple” (Line 46) tree, her happiness in the activity, helps make the area “the realest place I know” (Line 50). The poet notes the various pleasant things one could do or grow on that ground—“roller skate” (Line 53) or produce “a fig tree taller than you” (Line 56). All this hard work and exuberant life, “might make you want to stay alive forever” (Line 57). This opening metaphor which juxtaposes strain with exuberance is echoed throughout the poem, showing the reader that hardship and “gratitude” (line 23) always co-exist.

The poet is always understanding of the complexity of life’s experience, even such difficult times as a friend’s attempted suicide, the poet’s own father’s death, for someone “not smoking meth with your mother” (Line 65) and for someone “leaving and for coming back” (Line 67). This also extends to the importance of the way one “Aralee” laughs (Lines 72-74) or how a “small thing’s wail” (Line 79) makes “us gather into horses” (Line 81).

All these painful anecdotes lead us into spring and an exalting of its hyacinth bells” (Line 83) and its “crocuses” (Line 84). Gay maneuvers us to see beauty as integrally linked with melancholy by depicting the death of “clutches of bees” (Line 88) in a “beehive” (Line 86). Tenderly, he notes how postmortem they are “almost clinging to one another, / this one’s tiny head pushed / into another’s tiny wing […] the translucent paper of their wings fluttering / beneath my breath” (Lines 89-94). As he sees the “honey” (Line 96) left behind, he is overcome with grief and joy at their remaining gift. While their demise is mourned, the poet is simultaneously starkly aware of “everything’s glacial shine” (Line 97). Again, he implies that while we may feel horrified by trauma, we must marvel at the natural world around us and how sacrifice can turn into a gift.

We are not alone in our observations of life as a dance between joy and suffering. Gay wisely invites the reader into the poem, actively placing them on a “corduroy couch” (Line 99) and inviting them to “put your feet up” (Line 100). The list the poet prepares, he warns, is “going to be long” (Line 102) because he “can’t stop / my gratitude” (Line 104), including for “you, for staying” (Lines 103-105). He offers his audience “a cup of tea” (Line 107), which symbolizes the created poem. He also says he has “spooned honey into it” (Line 107) which alludes to the deceased “bees” (Line 88) in the previous stanza with an encouragement to concentrate not on their loss, but rather on what they have left behind. Joy, he hints, is essential in the aftermath of pain like “honey” (Line 107) is often used in “tea” (Line 107) to soothe the throat. He gives a “thank you [to] the tiny bee’s shadow / perusing these words as I write them” (Line 108-109) in tribute.

The death of the “bees” (Line 88) is alluded to again as the poet describes how his “love talks quietly” (Line 110) when she enters “the hive” (Line 111). Her deep connection to the poet is confirmed by the fact that she “reach[es] my way” (Line 115) instead of being “scare[d]” (Line 114) of his intense grief. Gay fondly reveals that she once “misremember[ed]” (Line 117) a poem he wrote, adding “elephants” (Line 117). This mistake, however, makes him conjure them up as a new element in the present poem, “oh, here / they come” (Lines 118-119). This helps him to again start up that “rusty brass band of gratitude” (Line 23) as he describes them as “trombones all the way down to the river” (Line 120), where he focuses on nature again. The water’s movement is beautiful and there’s a “flock of geese overhead” (Line 125).

Word association moves us into the next stanza as the natural world shifts from the “flock of geese” (Line 125) to the “gentle flocking / of men” (Line 126-127) who surround an “old lady falling down” (Line 127) on the street. They right her and “with the softest parts of their hands” (Line 129) collect her belongings. The elderly woman reminds him of the “61-year-old” (Line 136) playing basketball with Gay against “some runny-nosed kids” (Line 135). When their team wins the game, the older man “rip[s] off his shirt” (Line 139) to make the boys “admire the pacemaker’s scar” (Line 140). These image shows how human triumphs (winning, receiving help) are often tied to human difficulty (the surgery, losing your footing). Gay accentuates this by thanking our human functions, “the glad accordion’s wheeze / in the chest; thank you the bagpipes” (Line 143). In addition, at this moment, Gay metaphorically prepares for a long litany that occurs later, which regards he “heart” (Lines 233-249) and its ability to beat life’s dissonant but glorious tune.

Dissonance isn’t just auditory. Gay’s woman in a “gaudy dress” stops her car to “[whisk] a turtle off the road” (Line 147), which shows that we cannot always predict the kindness of others by their appearance. The woman’s dress makes the poet again think of his lover and the “sheer dress” (Line 151) she wore in a “dream” (Line 151) as well as “paisley panties” (Line 149) and “koi kissing / halos into the glassy air” (Lines 153-154). These romantic images lead Gay to imagining a space where he and his lover “[crawl] into the shawl of the other’s body” (Line 157). The joy of sexual intimacy inhabits both emotional connection and the physical body. Realizing that this personalized fantasy may seem to be less inclusive to the reader’s experience—Gay again notes that the reader’s attention to his tale is another “true kindness” (Line 61). He puts forth an offering—“I just want us to be friends now, forever / Take this bowl of blackberries from the garden. / […] I picked them just for you” (Line 169-172), so the sensuality is offered not just to the lover but also to the reader. He knows the boundaries of the poem but wants the reader be a part of his inclusive joy, even that which is tinged with loneliness.

To clarify this, he goes back to reminiscences of the dead, recalling finding the hair of a “murdered friend” (Line 175). In thought and feeling, the “friend” (Line 175) returns to him often “in a waft of incense or in the shape of a boy” (Line 180), functioning like the friendly “reader” (Line 104) who returns their attention again and again. In “dreams” (Line 184), the ghost of this man “puts his hand on our shoulders’ (Line 186) to direct the poet—and by extension the reader—when “lost and scared” (Line 185). Like the lover earlier in the beehive (Line 110), this figure offers comfort and understanding when grief seems too intense to carry. The ghost even points to a “temple across town” (Line 187).

While the word “temple” (Line 187) might at first call to mind a literal church, Gay next describes a garden in which a “man” (Line 188) works “all night long” (Line 188) to save his “peach tree” (Line 190). The “temple” (Line 187) is also the earth. Gay praises the “ancestor” (Line 195) who “smuggl[ed] seeds in her braid” (Line 197), the one who planted “a walnut tree” (Line 200), and the one who “did not bulldoze the grove / of dates and olives” (Lines 203-204). Gay praises those whose survival forged ours, who respected “the land” (202), who did not give up their lives or spirit despite life’s inevitable hardships. He wants us to use them as role models and likens them to “a plant birthed of the reseeding” which “is called a volunteer” (Lines 209-211). They performed the task of “lift[ing] some broken someone up” (Lines 208-209), helping those around them move forward.

The poet then renumerates a long list of all those natural items that struggle to flourish after “reseeding” (Line 209): “zinnia, and gooseberry, rudbeckia / and pawpaw, Ashmead’s kernel, cockscomb / and scarlet runner, feverfew and lemonbalm” (Line 223-225). The idea that growing things is a “balm” (Line 225) is, in Gay’s mind, “what in us rackets glad / what gladrackets us” (Line 231). This “gladracket” (Line 232), or joy, is then extended to include the “heart” (Lines 233-234) in all its incarnations of beauty, whether it’s “knuckleheaded” (Line 233) or “dumbstruck” (Line 236). Gay lets “this gap-toothed heart fling open its gaudy maw / to the sky” (Lines 234-235) so that by “bellowing forth” (Line 22, Line 26) its vulnerable to the “goat” (237) on “my peach tree’s highest branch” (Line 238). The beast’s last chewed mouthful of “fruit” (Line 239) “tumbl[es]” to the poet’s “mouth” (Line 242), smelling “of someone I’ve loved” (Line 242). Here, Gay reminds himself of the intensity of love. His own heart is equal parts “an elephant” which “[screams] like an elephant / at the bones of its dead” and “like the lady on the bus” (Line 245) “dressed head to toe in gold” (Line 246), and “singing” (Line 247). Loss and joy are again metaphorically intertwined.

Gay moves to an image of one of his greatest losses and speaks of his deceased “father” (Line 25), who like the “robin” (Line 3) in the poem’s beginning, returns “in a dream” (Line 250). He “[plucks] the two cables beneath my chin” (Line 251) until the poet “[wakes] singing / no kidding, singing, smiling” (Lines 253-254). Here, there is a return to the song the poet feels compelled to vocalize, an action blessed by both bird and patriarch. After this dream visitation, the poet “stumbl[es] into the garden” as he is “singing, smiling, / thank you, thank you” (Lines 254-255) to find “the Juneberry’s flowers had burst open / like the bells of French horns,” (Line 256-258), a description harkening back to the “brass band of gratitude” (Line 23). No longer “rusty” (Line 23), Gay has fully embraced what he has tried to say.

The poet again commends the reader’s patience and thanks them “for hanging tight” (Line 264) during his “long-winded” (Line 265) sermon. The poet wants to bathe “the sponge of gratitude / over every last thing, including [the reader]” (Line 267), baptizing us in this continuum of love and loss, even our "awkward" (Line 267) parts like our “ear and armpits” (Line 268). He assures the reader that “Soon it will be over” (Line 269) by which he means his overflowing poem but also—more deeply—life, too. Gay again discusses reverie. He notes that the “child in my dream” (Line 272) has suggested the end is “much worse than we think, and sooner” (Line 273-274) and “[points] at the roiling sea and sky” (Line 271). The poet compares the action of our living to “hurtling our way like so many buffalo,” clearly referencing the species’ dwindling population. He acknowledges the truth of doom—“no duh child in my dreams” (Line 275)—but clarifies that this inevitability is why we need to pay attention to joy. “What do you think / this singing and shuddering is” (Line 275-276) he asks. Gay refuses to shy away from the truth: life is a continual “goodbye” (Line 280). Therefore, he tells us, we must “[love] / what every second goes away” (Line 279) and determine to say “thank you. Every day” (Line 280). We must appreciate every tiny miracle, trauma, and joy that make up this one fleeting existence. We are only here on the planet for a short time, so we must be “unabashed” in how we love it during this one go-round.