Tag Archives: Gratitude

An All-Saints Kind of Gratitude

I look back through Novemember’s
just-hanging-on leaves, the negative space
of our promises to drive through Malabar’s
winding road, taking in October’s blasts of color.
The weeks have whipped by, the leaves ignoring my
requests to stay, to never fall away, and my melancholy
drips bitter without the sweet.

Then I see our love’s first fruits hanging
on you, lying on you like so many apples,
our children’s morning sweetness, their bodies’
hard softness, wild hair, pokey elbows,
squishy bellies and meaty feet.  They grow
unconditionally from our branches, buds,
and blossoms.  They grow their own stems and leaves
and seeds and develop their own autumn flavors.

We drop away when we are ripe

thankful for what we are

what we have

and what we miss.

Seeing Love

Squished banana adornes the counter,
turning formica to quartz,
sparkling, innocence like the eyes of infants.

A vase is filled,
broccoli blooms buttery
and the cilantro bolts to corriander,
tiny white flowers like lace.
Stalks of swiss chard, their deep red veins
and ruffling green leaves stand supportive
at the bouquet’s back
and the mint waits to be noticed.

Headed for laundry, I pass through the kitchen,
wipe up the abandoned fruit
and wonder about the remaining scent unseen.

When my babies are grown, explorers in the wild world,
how will I see love?

Abundance surrounds
the cut herbs and harvested vegetables
like an aura in the full kitchen.
When the empty bedrooms gape,
radical gratitude must be my first nature.
Then the absence will be as abundance,
the overflow of my blessing cup.