"Today I Celebrate My Body" is a poem from Maria Gillan's What Bloom in Winter collection. It focuses on the "blooms" that occur even in the "winter" of aging and physical decline. It highlights the shift from taking health for granted to finding joy in the smallest movements.
Today I Celebrate My Body
Today I celebrate my body,
that body that suddenly couldn’t move,
the hand that couldn’t hold a pen or open a cap,
that body that couldn’t turn over in the bed.
Each new thing I can do—
close my hand around the pill bottle,
hold a book, write my name—
I celebrate. I even celebrate my faltering step,
my one leg dragging.
These and other movements we take for granted
until we can no longer do them,
and only then, do we learn gratitude.
Maria Mazziotti Gillan's newest poetry collection is When the Stars Were Still Visible (2021). Other recent publications are the poetry and photography collection, Paterson Light and Shadow, and the poetry collections What Blooms in Winter and The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets, a pairing of her poems with her paintings.
Maria's artist website is MariaMazziottiGillan.com and her poetry website is MariaGillan.com.
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