But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands
gloved with green You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old finger
on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back.
You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful look
of the black dog, the look that says, If I could I would bite
every sorrow until it fled, and when it is August,
you can have it August and abundantly so. You can have love,
though often it will be mysterious, like the white foam
that bubbles up at the top of the bean pot over the red kidneys
until you realize foam’s twin is blood

-Barbara Ras

from You Can’t Have It All

I posted this poem not quite a year ago, in November. This morning, reading it again it struck me that today I have an eleven-year-old, a black dog and August. The eleven-year-old I only have for another month, the black dog, only God knows and August, just this one day until another year.

Oh, and I have love.

Today I want to have all that I have and abundantly so.

May you as well.