Common Things

I recently revisited the work of Pablo Neruda, specifically his poem Odes to Common Things. Below is the last stanza, this excerpt articulates the impact that the objects around us have on our being. I appreciate his adoration of the ordinary, because I believe that there is passion in the mundane.

O irrevocable
river
of things:
no one can say
that I loved
only
fish,
or the plants of the jungle and the field,
that I loved
only
those things that leap and climb, desire, and survive.
It’s not true:
many things conspired
to tell me the whole story.
Not only did they touch me,
or my hand touched them:
they were
so close
that they were a part
of my being,
they were so alive with me
that they lived half my life
and will die half my death.

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