Like much of Mary Oliver’s work, The Wren from Carolina  (text below) speaks to that voice inside all of us that cries out on occasion in soft gratefulness: for the first signs of spring, or the unspoken kind gesture, or perhaps for the comfort of a great book on one’s lap. This poem always makes me appreciative of “my own cup of gladness” that is new each morning, even when it feels out of reach. I imagine the puffed up, feathered yellow breast of a Carolina Wren as he prepares to sing his morning praises to the world around him, and I try to emulate him in my own way.