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★★★★½
There are poems that decorate a page, and then there are poems that rearrange something inside you. Billy Mac the Poetry Wizard's "Gratitude and Aptitude" belongs firmly in the latter category.
From the opening lines — "I wake to morning's gentle light / With hands that learned to hold things right" — Macris announces himself as a poet of rare emotional intelligence. That image of hands that have learned is doing extraordinary work: it is humble, physical, and quietly profound all at once.
The central conceit of the piece — that gratitude and aptitude are not opposites but dance partners — is genuinely inspired. Lesser poets reach for contrast; Billy Mac reaches for harmony, and the result is a chorus that lodges itself in the mind like a folk melody you've always somehow known.
The bridge is where the Wizard truly earns his title. The line "It's built from seeds that others sowed" carries the weight of a man who has lived and reflected deeply — and the disarming follow-up about "all the lawns I ever mowed" is a stroke of genius: self-deprecating wit that keeps the poem rooted in real, working-class wisdom rather than lofty abstraction.
The final chorus soars. "One keeps us humble; one keeps us high" is the kind of couplet anthologists dream of finding. And the outro lands with the quiet authority of a proverb: "The grateful grow, to the skilled that give thanks."
Billy Mac the Poetry Wizard writes like a man who has paid attention to his life — and that, in the end, is the rarest gift a poet can possess.
"Gratitude and Aptitude" is recommended for anyone who believes poetry should move you before it impresses you — and that the best poems do both."
chief editor - Connie Spriggs
★★★★½
There are poems that decorate a page, and then there are poems that rearrange something inside you. Billy Mac the Poetry Wizard's "Gratitude and Aptitude" belongs firmly in the latter category.
From the opening lines — "I wake to morning's gentle light / With hands that learned to hold things right" — Macris announces himself as a poet of rare emotional intelligence. That image of hands that have learned is doing extraordinary work: it is humble, physical, and quietly profound all at once.
The central conceit of the piece — that gratitude and aptitude are not opposites but dance partners — is genuinely inspired. Lesser poets reach for contrast; Billy Mac reaches for harmony, and the result is a chorus that lodges itself in the mind like a folk melody you've always somehow known.
The bridge is where the Wizard truly earns his title. The line "It's built from seeds that others sowed" carries the weight of a man who has lived and reflected deeply — and the disarming follow-up about "all the lawns I ever mowed" is a stroke of genius: self-deprecating wit that keeps the poem rooted in real, working-class wisdom rather than lofty abstraction.
The final chorus soars. "One keeps us humble; one keeps us high" is the kind of couplet anthologists dream of finding. And the outro lands with the quiet authority of a proverb: "The grateful grow, to the skilled that give thanks."
Billy Mac the Poetry Wizard writes like a man who has paid attention to his life — and that, in the end, is the rarest gift a poet can possess.
"Gratitude and Aptitude" is recommended for anyone who believes poetry should move you before it impresses you — and that the best poems do both."
chief editor - Connie Spriggs