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.