In this week’s poem, Stu Kestenbaum reminds us of the bright, unlikely miracle of being here at all. I love this poem’s stark winter images of survival and flight, and the euphoria of its final lines—a rousing, thrumming mantra worth repeating.

Stu Kestenbaum is the author of six books of poems, most recently “Things Seemed to Be Breaking” (Deerbrook Editions, 2021) and served as Maine’s poet laureate from 2016-2021.

Awake

Ten degrees and an after-the-storm-blue sky.
The mountain ash buffeted by wind,
its thin limbs shedding
delicate outlines of snow.
Finches, chickadees and woodpeckers
fly back and forth from tree to feeder,
black husks of seeds scattered on the ground,
because today like every day
is about survival, how
we go on living in the wind, how we
learn to breathe in the dark, surrounded
by a celestial dome. These birds
can fly to heaven and back again.
We feel the world shaking in the wind,
somewhere between trembling with fear
and an eyes-wide-open-mouth-
praising-awe that in all this spinning
we are here we are here we are.

– By Stu Kestenbaum

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Awake” copyright © 2023 by Stu Kestenbaum, appears by permission of the author.