Kenneth here.
It’s Poetry Friday, and I’m not really a poetry reader, but every once in a while, a snippet from somewhere sticks (Dulce et decorum est, pro patri mori, anyone?). Special thanks to Today’s Little Ditty for hosting this week.
A friend posted this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson on Facebook (or is it FACEBOOK?) recently, and it made me think of another friend who once told me that one of the reasons he liked his job as a flight attendant was that once the trip was over, he could say goodbye to his passengers and colleagues, no matter what had happened, good or bad. Come the next flight he could start over again, with a different set of passengers and colleagues, and again on the next flight, and on and on.
When he passed away after a brief illness before the age of 40, I took that as a lesson to live life with no regrets, and to take each day as it comes.
Write it on your heart
that every day is the best day in the year.
He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day
who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.
Finish every day and be done with it.
You have done what you could.
Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in.
Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day;
begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit
to be cumbered with your old nonsense.
This new day is too dear,
with its hopes and invitations,
to waste a moment on the yesterdays.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Collected Poems & Essays
Amazon | Book Depository
Gathering Books 
I don’t know if I was that ‘friend’, but I did post this by Emerson a few days ago. I’m glad to see it again & to read your story of your friend, looking for another start, another group. I’m sad, though, that he died so young but glad he left you such a gift.
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I love this poem, Kenneth. Thank you for sharing it. I”m thinking maybe I should read it every morning and every night as an affirmation so that wonderful things can happen and I will be ready!
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This is one to read and remember every day.
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Beautiful…the poem, the way it touched you and honors your friend. Thank you, I have written it on my heart.
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Searching for this poem by Emerson in its entirety, has been my Nemesis. I cannot find it in any book with any of his writings. If someone out there can tell me what book the entire poem is in, I would truly appreciate it. It was to be a gift to my daughter. I fear the poem was put together with his words from different poems and was assembled and now claimed as Emerson’s own
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Emerson translated, among others, Persian poets, Hafiz and Omar Khayyam and others, on the advice of Goethe. The passage to this excerpt, by the way, begins, “He said, Write it on your heart … .” Try reading Emerson’s essays for any commentary on his translations. Try Hafiz!
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