Don’t Say Blessed
by Carolyn Williams-Noren
It’s not yours. It comes. It goes
like all the colors. Can’t be held
forever, can’t be taken. Is, is all. Not
a dollar, not a gift.
It’s like soup—you can’t deserve it, can’t
not deserve it. It isn’t
a medal. It’s not a raise, not a slap.
Not a new car, even after you lived years
with the rattletrap Honda whose a/c worked
a quarter of the time. In the new car, the
smooth ride. Happiness isn’t even that quiet relief.
It’s soup coming to a simmer. It’s cool, cool,
cool, then warm. Because of a fire the soup
can’t even think of.
like all the colors. Can’t be held
forever, can’t be taken. Is, is all. Not
a dollar, not a gift.
It’s like soup—you can’t deserve it, can’t
not deserve it. It isn’t
a medal. It’s not a raise, not a slap.
Not a new car, even after you lived years
with the rattletrap Honda whose a/c worked
a quarter of the time. In the new car, the
smooth ride. Happiness isn’t even that quiet relief.
It’s soup coming to a simmer. It’s cool, cool,
cool, then warm. Because of a fire the soup
can’t even think of.
Carolyn Williams-Noren
Carolyn Williams-Noren’s poems and essays have been in many journals, most recently Prairie Schooner and Asterales. Her poetry collection, Oil Courses (Kent State University Press, 2026), reckons with her childhood close to the oil industry in Alaska. She also makes the emailed recipe comic series “This is good.”