Your Daily Poem

This site exists for one purpose only: to help dispel the ugly and absolutely untrue myth that poetry is boring. Granted, a lot of poetry is boring, but you won't find it here. At Your Daily Poem, you'll find poetry that is touching, funny, provocative, inspiring, uplifting, and surprising. It may punch you in the gut, it may bring tears to your eyes, it may make you laugh out loud, but it most assuredly will not bore you!

Poetry on YDP—by poets living and long dead, famous to completely unknown--is specially selected for accessibility and appeal. Thanks so much for visiting—and remember: a poem a day keeps the doldrums away!

Inheritance
by
Mark Thalman

In Grandfather’s shop, I search for a pair of gloves,
but none seem to match. Either the right or left
has been lost in an act of forgetfulness.

I find a few that could be sculptures Rodin would have admired:
a hand gripping an invisible hammer, another resting as in a lap,
one pointing like it knew the correct direction.

His daily sweat soaked into the leather
making the palms shiny as calluses, fingers ridged
until stretched like skin, worn again.

I try them on and my fingerprints embed
on top of his. My hands ready to rake twigs and cones
blown down around the cabin all winter.

This poem first appeared in M Review and later appeared in Deer Drink the Moon: Poems of Oregon (Ooligan Press, Portland State University).
Used here with the author’s permission.

Mark Thalman, editor of poetry.us.com and author of Catching the Limit (Fairweather Books), has been widely published for four decades. He received his MFA from the University of Oregon, and is retired after teaching English in public schools for 32 years. Mark, also an artist who enjoys painting wildlife scenes with acrylics, lives in Forest Grove, Oregon. Learn more about him at www.markthalman.com.

Lori Levy:
Beautiful images of the gloves.
Posted 12/03/2025 01:36 PM

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