Giving Thanks

I'm struck lately

by the bounty

of time given 

in retirement,

the stretch of day

to do as I want.

The burden is to choose

wisely, to plumb

my heart and play 

my stars, each day.

The grace

is the freedom 

of choice itself. 

What excites me,

interests me, draws me,

expands me? 

How can I move

toward those?

How can I fall

more in love with

life, this life, my life?

Read, write, run,

nurture family,

talk to John,

visit friends,

settle after years of travel,

become a hub,

although the 'of what'

can't be known yet. 

Weigh in

on what matters,

Step toward it.

Be an ally.

That's all. Except to

give thanks 

for this life.

 For Brian at dVerse Poets Pub who asked us to write what we're thankful for. I took the photo of the Swan Boats in Boston this past summer.

This is How I Will Remember You

This is how I will remember you,
how I will recall you when I must someday,
astride the chair, ruddy cheeked. It's just this moment,
not another, that will echo you forever. You
know my spine stiffens when angry, fends you off,
so you reached out and touched my cheek. Just that. Knowing
gleaned from years together, decanted from our every day, suffused
in your bones with tenderness. That encrypted gesture,
vaulted past refusal, brought me you, not chined as
I expected, but tiptoed touch forged with covenant to
nudge memory of all we have and who we are. I
grieve my lack of heed, seek to encode that touch forever.

22 November 2012


This is in response to Sam's prompt for a Thanksgiving acrostic over at dVerse Poets Pub. He posted his wonderful memory/poem there as well. Because my Honey is in London, I miss him and realize the great gratitude I hold for the gift of him in my life. Happy Thanksgiving.

Sing I Must in Thanks

Sing I Must in Thanks


As I have all I want and more, sing
I 'thanks' with full heart and strong voice
to all who fill my heart, and then, sing
again, blare voice, and join thy voice
as we share and sing, record all sound
of thanks to trumpet 'round the world, rejoice
that we share, rejoice, make joyful sound,
bare hearts as one, bare souls as we rejoice.

20 November 2012



This is posted for Open Link Monday at Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads but is a form described in their previous Sunday mini-challenge. It's an eight line innovation by William Butler Yeats with specific prescriptions regarding repetition of end words and repeats of those words within lines of the poem. If you click on this link and go to "older post" you can read all about it and read some great examples.

It is also linked to dVerse Poets since this is Open Link Night hosted by the ever generous Brian Miller. Check it out and you'll meet some very talented poets.

It took me a while to finish but I hoped to have it as a poem for Thanksgiving. So here it is with my gratitude to my friends in the blogospere. Thanks for your inspiration, your conversation and for sharing your voices, yourselves with me. It's an important thing we do. My life, indeed the world, is richer for it.

SINEAD O'CONNOR - THANK YOU FOR HEARING ME, LOVING ME - LIVE

Sinead O'Connor's song has a wonderful line in it where she gives thanks for what has broken her heart. I hear it as gratitude for that which breaks her heart, all our hearts wide open, which is a great reminder after my last post because that's exactly what happened to me after "that year". What makes the pain, sorrow, heartbreak bearable, even remarkable, is this simple fact that all the heart break of life breaks us out into out true selves in ways that can't happen otherwise. And links us up with others because we can have compassion on all other hearts broken wide open. She sings thank you for that. Me too.

Happy Easter With Tibetan Prayer Flags

Say this sincere prayer as you hang prayer flags on your own wall or garden trees: 


I hang these prayer flags for the benefit of all sentient beings to experience healing, peace and the power of compassion. Feel the breeze of clean wind that holds this prayer I pray for you and for all! 


May it be so.


Happy Spring, Happy Easter, Celebrate life!

Fiercely Grateful

I used to Keep a gratitude journal. Each day I made myself write 5 specific, concrete things I was grateful for that day. It helped me through a dark time, kept me grounded in goodness, and saved my emotional life until I could know again that the world is a friendly place.

Every year at Thanksgiving, I go back to this practice to remind myself of great grace in my life, The gifts I've been given and all that I am grateful for. This year my list is long. Not just longer but bigger in it's scope from living internationally and all the blessings that have come from that. It's like the world has offered itself to me.

I'm grateful for my family, for the love and constancy that we offer one another, the deepening friendships happening among us, and the laughter and fun we have together. Especially John. How can I express the awe I feel that after 37 years together, he is my best friend, favorite companion, and makes me laugh out loud more than ever.

I'm grateful for my friends, old friends who hold the memories of a lifetime in precious hands even while we make new ones with them, with their kids, with their grand kids. What wealth we share. And new friends who bring the fresh possibilities of new ways of looking at things that stretch me, enrich me and keep me fresh, too. My blog friends are in this group. I'm pleased to have sojourners and seekers to share this journey with.

I'm grateful for meaningful work which provides me a way to give back, to help those taking tentative steps toward health, to lend my knowledge, experience and love to those who need it, who bask in it or grab it hungrily and then go forward and do likewise. It's a glorious spiral, a sacred dance.

I'm grateful for books, my passion for them, my ability to get lost in them, my abiding affection for the characters I come to know and treasure. They shake me up and let me into worlds I'd have no other way of knowing. They excite me every time.

I'm grateful for nature and the physicalness of being out in it. The walking, hiking, running- using my body, having it respond, stay healthy, feel good and discover the rush. The sea and the mountains that call me and keep me interacting with them,  that intoxicate me, that teach me the connectedness of all life, the spiritual essence of what I have come to believe.

For all this, for all you, I am fiercely grateful.