Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Thursday, July 31st, 2025.

We're continuing our theme of milestones and celebrations with another anniversary poem.

This one by Philip Appelman.

It's called Simply Anniversary.

It's another endearing poem about what accrues over time

and the way in which not only successes,

but also sometimes wounds and failures,

end up amalgamating to something positive and beautiful. Here is anniversary. Maybe it wasn't

strange to find drums and symbols where there might have been violins. Maybe we couldn't have

known. Besides, would it have mattered?

Look at this hand, this arm, the thick scar across the knuckles, another in the palm,

a ragged one running along the forearm.

And you, I know your scars at midnight by touch.

Everything we've learned we've picked up by ear, a pigeon language of the heart, just enough to get by touch. Everything we've learned we've picked up by ear, a pigeon language of the heart,

just enough to get by on. We know the value of cacophony, how to measure with a broken yardstick,

what to do with bruised fruit, reading torn maps, we always make it home, riding on empty.

And whatever this thing is, palace, cottage? We remember putting it up, every beam, siding it skew, making it plum eventually, and here it stands,

stone over rock, and on the simple hearth is our own cricket, and in the walls there are secret

passages leading to music nobody else can hear, and in the walls there are secret passages leading to music nobody

else can hear, and somewhere in a room that's not yet finished, there are volumes in our own

hand telling troubled tales, promises kept, and promises still to keep.

...