James Crews: It’s Good to Be Here,

I say out loud, to give the words
the physical presence they deserve
in the warm bakery with us, this place
we’ve been coming for years now.
The familiar pale blue chairs and a few
snowflakes feeling their way down
through the air. The scent of bread
and croissants rising in vast, lit ovens
we glimpse through a window into
the kitchen, flour dusting everything.
It’s good to be anywhere, I think
but do not say this time, at last glad
to be alive in a body that spills a little
over my too-tight belt, acquiring more
and more of the tiny moles my mother
used to call beauty marks. I lift the last
few crumbs of a scone from my plate
with strawberries and bluebells painted
along the edge, saying to myself, like
some God trying to remake this world,
It is good, it is good, it is good.

~~~~

Copyright 2026 James Crews

James Crews is the editor of several bestselling anthologies, including The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope, which has over 100,000 copies in print. He has been featured in The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, The Christian Science Monitor, and on NPR’s Morning Edition. James is the author of four prize-winning books of poetry—The Book of What Stays, Telling My Father, Bluebird, and Every Waking Moment—and a book of short essays, Kindness Will Save the World: Stories of Compassion and Connection. James also speaks and leads workshops on kindness, mindfulness, and writing for self-compassion. He lives with his husband on forty rocky acres in the woods of Southern Vermont.James Crewsis the editor of several bestselling anthologies, including The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope, which has over 100,000 copies in print. He has been featured in The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, The Christian Science Monitor, and on NPR’s Morning Edition. James is the author of four prize-winning books of poetry—The Book of What Stays, Telling My Father, Bluebird, and Every Waking Moment—and a book of short essays, Kindness Will Save the World: Stories of Compassion and Connection. James also speaks and leads workshops on kindness, mindfulness, and writing for self-compassion. He lives with his husband on forty rocky acres in the woods of Southern Vermont.