Another Thanksgiving Day. Today we are grateful that our Milo seems to be recovered from a bout of... something gastrointestinal. So much so that yesterday, after not eating breakfast, later in the afternoon he insisted we play squirrel fetch. Who were we to refuse? And then he licked his dinner bowl clean.
We are grateful that, even at (almost) 69 and (all of) 70, we still feel no particular aches or pains. They say 70 is the magic age, at which all that starts to change. I reckon I have a year left, anyway. I'm going to milk it for all it can give me.
We are grateful for abundance and comfort. For opportunity and adventure. For family and friends.
Here are a few poems about gratitude:
As If To Demonstrate an Eclipse
I pick an orange from a wicker basket
and place it on the table
to represent the sun.
Then down at the other end
a blue and white marble
becomes the earth
and nearby I lay the little moon of an aspirin.
I get a glass from a cabinet,
open a bottle of wine,
then I sit in a ladder-back chair,
a benevolent god presiding
over a miniature creation myth,
and I begin to sing
a homemade canticle of thanks
for this perfect little arrangement,
for not making the earth too hot or cold
not making it spin too fast or slow
so that the grove of orange trees
and the owl become possible,
not to mention the rolling wave,
the play of clouds, geese in flight,
and the Z of lightning on a dark lake.
Then I fill my glass again
and give thanks for the trout,
the oak, and the yellow feather,
singing the room full of shadows,
as sun and earth and moon
circle one another in their impeccable orbits
and I get more and more cockeyed with gratitude.
—Billy Collins
Gratitude
What did you notice?
The dew-snail;
the low-flying sparrow;
the bat, on the wind, in the dark;
big-chested geese, in the V of sleekest performance;
the soft toad, patient in the hot sand;
the sweet-hungry ants;
the uproar of mice in the empty house;
the tin music of the cricket’s body;
the blouse of the goldenrod.
What did you hear?
The thrush greeting the morning;
the little bluebirds in their hot box;
the salty talk of the wren,
then the deep cup of the hour of silence.
What did you admire?
The oaks, letting down their dark and hairy fruit;
the carrot, rising in its elongated waist;
the onion, sheet after sheet, curved inward to the pale green wand;
at the end of summer the brassy dust, the almost liquid beauty of the flowers;
then the ferns, scrawned black by the frost.
What astonished you?
The swallows making their dip and turn over the water.
What would you like to see again?
My dog: her energy and exuberance, her willingness,
her language beyond all nimbleness of tongue,
her recklessness, her loyalty, her sweetness,
her strong legs, her curled black lip, her snap.
What was most tender?
Queen Anne’s lace, with its parsnip root;
the everlasting in its bonnets of wool;
the kinks and turns of the tupelo’s body;
the tall, blank banks of sand;
the clam, clamped down.
What was most wonderful?
The sea, and its wide shoulders;
the sea and its triangles;
the sea lying back on its long athlete’s spine.
What did you think was happening?
The green beast of the hummingbird;
the eye of the pond;
the wet face of the lily;
the bright, puckered knee of the broken oak;
the red tulip of the fox’s mouth;
the up-swing, the down-pour, the frayed sleeve of the first snow—
so the gods shake us from our sleep.
—Mary Oliver
And finally, here is e. e. cummings reciting his poem "i thank You God for most this amazing":
No no, finally finally, just to really change the mood, here is "the greatest thank you of all time," courtesy of Stephen Colbert and the inimitable Hugh Laurie:
Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving, to those of you who celebrate. And to all of you, I hope you can count much that you are grateful for.
But don't, as I won't, forget to be righteously angry about the continued injustices in this world. Both can exist at once: gratitude and a desire to right the wrongs.
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