**Announcement**
Please join us at dVerse LIVE on Saturday, November 9 from 10 to 11 AM EST.
A Google meet link will be provided at Open Link Night on Thursday.

Hello, dVerse Poets! This is Merril from Yesterday and Today. By the time this post is live, we will have moved the clocks back, and I will probably be grumpy because I’ll still wake at the same time. More importantly, today is Election Day here in the US. Today is literally about upholding democracy or destroying it, and it is unfathomable to me that so many are voting for fascism and for turning back the clock on rights. It’s unlikely we’ll know who won tonight, though like many others, I will be watching the returns.

But for now, let’s take a break. This is not to forget about all the horrible things that are happening in the world. It’s simply a brief pause to remember to also find joy.

In an excerpt from 18 Life-Learnings from 18 Years of The Marginalian by Maria Popova, Popova wrote:

“14. Choose joy. Choose it like a child chooses the shoe to put on the right foot, the crayon to paint a sky. Choose it at first consciously, effortfully, pressing against the weight of a world heavy with reasons for sorrow, restless with need for action. Feel the sorrow, take the action, but keep pressing the weight of joy against it all, until it becomes mindless, automated, like gravity pulling the stream down its course; until it becomes an inner law of nature. If Viktor Frankl can exclaim “yes to life, in spite of everything!” — and what an everything he lived through — then so can any one of us amid the rubble of our plans, so trifling by comparison. Joy is not a function of a life free of friction and frustration, but a function of focus — an inner elevation by the fulcrum of choice. So often, it is a matter of attending to what Hermann Hesse called, as the world was about to come unworlded by its first global war, “the little joys”; so often, those are the slender threads of which we weave the lifeline that saves us.”
This is only part of #14, read the rest of it and the other “Life-learnings” here.

Or, as Mary Oliver wrote:

“Don’t Hesitate”
By Mary Oliver

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty
of lives and whole towns destroyed or about
to be. We are not wise, and not very often
kind. And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this
is its way of fighting back, that sometimes
something happens better than all the riches
or power in the world. It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant
when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case.
Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid
of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

Or remember how you are a part of something larger as Jo Harjo does.

For Keeps
By Jo Harjo

Sun makes the day new.
Tiny green plants emerge from earth.
Birds are singing the sky into place.
There is nowhere else I want to be but here.
I lean into the rhythm of your heart to see where it will take us.
We gallop into a warm, southern wind.
I link my legs to yours and we ride together,
Toward the ancient encampment of our relatives.
Where have you been? they ask.
And what has taken you so long?
That night after eating, singing, and dancing
We lay together under the stars.
We know ourselves to be part of mystery.
It is unspeakable.
It is everlasting.
It is for keeps.

Today, I’m asking you to write about something(s) that brings you joy. It can be a tiny thing, like a favorite mug, or a big thing like seeing so many people voting, or huge, like life itself.
If you need a specific idea, look around the room you’re in now or look out the window. Find something there that brings you joy. There are no limits. And there can be more than one thing.

This is Poetics, so there is also no designated form.

Optional Bonus ideas : Include at least one kenning; write your poem as a letter; write your poem as a fairy tale; use the phrase “keep breathing” or “everything matters.”

New to dVerse? Here’s how to join in:

*Write a poem in response to the challenge.
*Enter a link directly to your poem and your name by clicking Mr. Linky below;
remember to check the little box to accept the use/privacy policy.
*You will find links to other poets and more will join so please do check
back later in order to read their poems.
*Read and comment on other poets’ work–we all come here to have our poems read.
*Please link back to dVerse from your site/blog.