GIVING THANKS

The old dog is snoring like an oboe.  We have so much

comfort, so much gratitude.  But a large piece of wind

plays me the anguish of people like long-distance calls,

 

extinguished in a midnight vigil where no moon rises,

where daylight is an infinity away.  Maybe hope rests,

tingling, in a different neighborhood, one of unknown

 

zip code. It’s harsh, isn’t it, to keep war’s terrible face

in mind as we share a magnificent meal of plenty

and grace as all the suffering in the world clamors below

 

every forkful in our home.  The sleeping dog

moans.  If I were a person of shallow religion I might quote

unfounded platitudes here about “working in mysterious

 

ways” or “everything happens for a reason”

as videos are blurred so all of us screen-watchers

drift past the horrors like a susurration of so many starlings.

 

Can we grasp the entire picture? This is how we have to do it

in America, with mouths full of unblinking compassion.

With holes in our collective stockings of serving ourselves first.

With hearts the size of suffering nations holding onto every

beat toward peace.

J. Pratt-Walter, © 2023

 

The Tally of the Days

What does 60 years get you

but the thrumming tides of a heart

almost too full of thanks

to keep beating?

Sometimes these todays,

sometimes the click of years gone by

seem like a cryptic wound where

pain lives, hidden deep in your roots  –

you feel at once the burdens,

the joys and levity of life like flowers before

the rational mind ever notices.

Looking back, I welcome them

equally.

Be careful where you walk –

Love has spilled over when and where-

ever our shadows met and touched,

even almost 60 years later.

J. Pratt-Walter, © 4/8/2019

NaPoWriMo day #8

DRAB

       That gray and brown junco

crouching plain as sand in the

winter-nude branch of the quince

never gets the compliments.

I mean, really, who ever says

“Your being drab is so lovely”?

Bindweed, the morning glory:

you dig and toil to rid your garden of it.

Do you ever see how glorious it is

all on its own, it’s pale and artful face

revolving to the sunrise?

Those small tan slugs sliding

through the strawberry leaves:

I bet you never thanked them 
for their thoughtful
recycling of organic matter.  Earth does.

See the junco in her shaded perfection.

Marvel at the bindweed in its unfolding.

Thank the slugs, for they remake the world.

J. Pratt-Walter, © 2019