A Girl and Her Camera

For a young Lulu like me, the time whips past me nowadays. The days are just so short, only 24 hours to play, have snacks, visit exciting places, go to work, pray, struggle and succeed. I can never find enough time, and the moment I feel that I have a hold on all of the things I treasure, they slip out of my fingers and vanish for a spell.
That's why, my wonderful friends, I am absolutely in love with the magical invention called a camera.
Everything about it stirs my chubby heart. I love the little click it makes, the massive lenses that I change to capture the birds from 200 meters away or to sneak into the tiny world of a flower or bumblebee. I wish I could explain how much joy and inspiration and change this one simple tool has brought into my humble world. There are many splendid ways of capturing the imagination, and every one of us is an incredible artist each in our own ways as we explore the meaning of our lives and the mystery of the spirit surrounding us.
I love paints, I love sketching pencils. I go crazy with writing, pouring myself out in words comes so naturally and just feels so right. Always with a pen or typing, I can speak myself clearly without the stumbling and shyness that sometimes sneaks up on me when I engage with the people I care about day to day.
But there is nothing, nothing like a camera for me. Nothing like pressing that blessed little button and stopping all of time forever, to revisit whenever I want to.
It drives me crazy. Do you know that silly feeling when you absolutely itch in your soul to do what your heart loves best? It's very bad of me, cause I used to tease a wonderful friend for his inclination to carry his movie camera with him everywhere, no matter what we were doing; oh but now I understand so deeply. When you find the thing that expresses so profoundly everything that you feel and love and savor, it comes to your mind whenever another beautiful moment arises. I feel a deep need to capture.
I also have a very poor memory, and if I don't have something written down or photographed that I can return to, sometimes my memories lie sleeping in my mind for ages and I forget them completely.
But I want to be a time-traveler, able to return to when I was fourteen and twenty and what I did a few weeks ago. I hope so much that my great Love has something like a camera in His Kingdom, some way to freeze the moments of eternity and return to them whenever I wish.
Photographs have broken and freed my heart. In a glance, I can return to people I miss dearly and feel that somehow, I'm still with them. I have a very beautiful photo of my grandmother and my sweet Cilla hugging on a flowery porch at my aunt's house in the country, and every time I see it, it makes me feel as if we aren't separated for now. Somehow from within the depths of the photograph, they visit with me.
Photos can even be dangerous for me. I get lost in nostalgia sometimes, and have had to hide photos from myself (but I always keep them) so that I wouldn't stumble across them and get hit with a wave of reverie that would take me away from the happiness in my present moments.
Photos became my diary a few years ago; a journal for myself when I found my hands empty and I was unsure of how to see myself anymore. I didn't know who I was or what I was meant for; I felt like life's biggo-est failure and I was greatly unhappy with who I was. I had a very small camera, a simple little purple one that didn't work very well and washed everything out colorwise, but I loved it and every now and then when I felt lost, I'd hold it out at arms length and try to catch a glimpse of the lovable, vibrant and enthusiastic girl I hoped was resting somewhere inside of me.
And it worked!
With every photo, somehow I felt that I knew myself better. I hadn't been very happy whenever someone wanted to take my peekture before. There's lots of photos of me when I was a little Lulu either scowling or making a very goofy face cause cameras made me uncomfortable. But I always loved when the photos arrived, in shiny square prints. I'd look through them again and again and again. I was crazy about pictures of us.
When I joined the community called Flickr, I didn't use it as a portfolio, I just got lost in the massive sea of other peoples lives. The photos were so exquisite and glorious, of people I would never meet and places I might never see. I could travel the world and see millions of stories without moving an inch. That's when I started to get excited about sharing my stories too. My wonderful Poppies friend Bethie traded me her DSLR for my easier to use point and shoot, and unwittingly began me on the funnest journey I've ever been on.
It took me ages to figure out how to use the big, scary camera with so many different functions, and even more ages to understand things like lighting, lenses, aperture, ISO and all of those very confusing things. But I couldn't stay away from my little camera so I just kept playing with it and eventually over a long time, became familiar with the things that had once seemed way over my head.
I learned how to edit my photos naturally too, using natural lighting and accentuating details so that the photo was always true to what I had shot, but was more pronounced.
The whole world inspires me. The snow, the flowers, the people. It's all so detailed and loved. Photography has been the song of myself I've been looking for, for so long. This life is so important, and I want to treasure it forever. That little shutter has shown me who I am, and that was all I needed to go out into the world without being afraid or ashamed.
Oh sweet little camera, thank you so much! Thank you for being my journal, for teaching me to try new things, to explore, to hike, to roam, to let loose my emotions and dreams and share them, thank you for letting me see myself in a new light and for giving me a means to hold on tightly to this life that I cherish, and the lives of all the beautiful people around me. This is such a special blessing...I'm overwhelmingly thrilled to be trotting off to school soon to learn more and more and more! I'm going to just freak out in those labs, I just know it hehe :D
Oh boy oh boy oh boy! Well my loves, I would write something much better and super cool, but there's a little Rebellious Canon blinking at me from nearby and about 3 or 4 inches at least of newfallen snow, so I will have to tell you mas things later! I love youuuuuuu <3

Pocahontas

Savage!
The woods whispered it
All the elms alight
I called down the water
Sent my breath into the goldenrod
So that when your hand brushed it
Once upon the evening field
You'd put fingers to my lips
If I speak a word now
It will vanish
So I'll leave pieces of soul
For you to find
On the riverbank
Swathed in the trail of starlight
I found you when all the world was dust and empty
The last oasis to bless your Pisces
I would drown in you, if I could
Great swells of ocean, you and me
The same
I would never cry for shore or for aid
Only lay in the depths of your arms forever
Don't hoist the sails when you float past
Look up for a glimpse of me in the hemlock
Swaying, your weeping ghost
Drunk from your love and your leaving
How can you fill a thing and then empty it?
Swell my soul with the North Wind and the Indian Summer of your eyes
Only to take my very life
Lungs heaving for you and finding nothing
Only the absence of my every longing
Come back, come back
I and the trees have been waiting so long for you
Praying your name
Falling to the earth again and again
Thunderclouds bursting free overhead
Does the rain go to you like I ask it to?
Does it land on your eyelids and shoulders
With the memory of me?
Savage!
I whispered it, broken and breaking
Come back, come back
To the meadow where I've been waiting
So long, so long
Asking the clouds if they've seen you
My beautiful saint
Come back

Good Morning

Oh this, must be a good morning
All the last cotton wisps of fog visiting with the ivy
Politely finding whatever spaces Nature hasn't yet filled herself
This must be a good morning
Though I slept too late in the down and white
Danced too early into the morning
And collapsed here, a fledgling in a big soft nest
Sleepy from shaking off all the old
And coating the new in smiles and hand-holds and balloons
Then there was that fog, too delicious to ignore
Even as the sun began to think about rising
And my knees threatened to begin falling
So out I went!
The world is too powerful a thing to miss
Going out into it is the dearest prayer I know
So I investigated the seated clouds
And then satisfied, could rest my head
Now it's here, this good morning
Sweater snuggled into the day
All that's been so far is happy peeks outside of the window
Fingers clicking over the sunny keys
Telling you the story of my grand morning
In which I did nothing
But had everything, jolly and well in my lap
I like to snooze and wonder about things
How this shall be and what a fairy tale could mean
If it breathed and stirred and walked the Earth with me
I like even better to wake and wander
Crunch over the frosted lawn in small boots
A sparkling lens jaunty on my shoulder blade
All of this makes a good, good morning
The first one of a year that's never been before
The moments sneaking enchanted into the room
Playing with all the contents of my old life
Leaving me different when I woke up
But content like a lamb
I am pastured in the good mornings
When I rise with the sun or wake when the bluebirds are having lunch
All this quiet greeting
My fondest hours
Soon it'll be afternoon and I'll go here and there
There'll be opinions to consider
Time to manage
But for now, I think I shall simply be here with the morning
Grin big to just myself in the sea of quilts and Noah's Ark
Wish all the world a brave new morning!

Holly Jolly Christmastime

My sweet dears, as this beautiful Sunday dawned very frostily blue and the palest yellow, I smiled biggo in my squishy bed as I remembered almost instantly with a start that today marks only 7 until Christmas day. In the rush of my world arranging and rearranging all over again (as I've marked with a grin, it's often wont to do), I have almost neglected Christmas this year, which for me has been a strange feeling, as if if I've woken up every day and forgotten to be myself.
Christmas has been the sparkling ruby in my every year for some time now. When I was a child, I was impatient for it to get here, I wanted to demand the days to rush faster and faster and for it to be that sparkling, overabundant morning as quickly as possible. Now, I wish the days would drag themselves before me. I have only one week before Christmas falls like the softest of snow over the night when the stars blaze like they forget to the rest of the year. One more week until the whole world is hushed in the full moon, except for my pounding heart.
I've felt sheepish about Christmas this year. I can acknowledge without shame, that I feel an enthusiasm for the holidays and celebrations, that my adorable comrades my fellow age no longer feel. In fact, it's awful hard for me to find anyone that shares the way the spirit of Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, birthdays and even Independence Day fills me with complete glee.
But Christmas... is the best of them all. The summer has ferns and flags, Easter the pastels and new baby chicks at Agway to hold, but Christmas has the most splendor of any season. The red and gold, the tinsel and baubles in every corner, my beloved evergreens dressed up in every finery imaginable, the whisper of a magic so pure, so strong that you have to fight a furious battle in order not to join it.
Mostly, the only place that I can find Christmas in the new and more grown-up world I'm swiftly entering is in the relentless advertisement of stores and companies, which makes my heart sadder than there are words to tell. I know a lot of my very warm-hearted and wondrous friends and family who just really don't get into Christmas, because the only place they've seen it expressed too, is in the ridiculous ads on their T.V's and in that strange sanitorium of Wally World.
Oh but that's not my Christmas!
My Christmas is that little chill that you get when you find yourself deliciously alone in the heart of the woods, and you can feel the trees watching you with unseen affection. Christmas isn't about what you buy at all, though of course we all know that deep in our souls. Christmas is something entirely different, and I've clung to it as stubbornly as I cling to almost everything else that has slipped through my fingers in pursuit of fame and fortune in the modern world.
Christmas is much different than money or influence, and I know that people remember the trueness of it, it's just that like my beautiful God, it takes a conscious decision to pursue and it unveils itself slowly but in time, generously with things unfamiliar. Christmas wraps us all up every year in a mystery too pure and glorious for words, that there was once upon a time as all the best stories begin, in a country of green hills and the cosmos like a great wash of ocean overhead, a new child who would teach us all what it means to be a child like Him too. Every year on the 25th, I remember, for all the times throughout the year I've forgotten in my haste to be a part of my swirling and beautiful circle of peers who have forgotten as well.
Anyone can be a child like the child that was born that night, at whatever true month of the year it really was. It doesn't matter if you're a 103 or only 22 like me, everyone can learn to be a child like that; one who would give His life for the people He loved and give to them every gift in His possession, and especially of Himself.
He teaches me how to be a child like that. One who takes the time to give foot rubs and have scrumptious dinners with everyone I love, a child who walks without fear on water that holds me up and who can still see the holy exuberance of all this gorgeous life swelling up around me.
Now, some people get upset at this time, saying adorable things like "Jesus is the reason for the season" and other little things because they're hurt and saddened that the world doesn't recognize Him now like it did that. For me, a goofy little kiddo awash in her plethora of lights and ornaments, Jesus is the reason for everything, not just Christmas, and it's because He is everything. He's lilac in the spring, cool rivers in the summer, a suspicious and overwhelming star in the night sky that says "I'm here for you my loves"
He's the reason because if I know how to love at all, it's because He taught me. That love isn't about what I can buy for you (although I must admit I'm a presents fiend and I suspect He is too), it's about the offer to share my life, like He offered so many nights ago in that little town of Bethlehem, sweetly lying like the eye of a hurricane that would sweep over all of us.
Christmas is the offer of life. And I pray to God that I always feel the call that all of Nature sings, to take that offer and treasure it at every second. The world bursts into bloom in the spring, but the heart opens up like summer at Christmastime if you listen to all that's going on around you, away from the bustle of the shopping malls and the angry people in long lines everywhere you go. We're all being invited to the most beautiful party we could imagine. A party where the saints are our friends and come to check in on us, asleep with our sugar plums late at night. A party about promises kept, which is the very best kind. Of course, Christmas is a human created sort of thing, but humans make beautiful things. I think that someone who truly keeps Christmas makes our God smile with a biggo smile, even if it's all just His children playing dress up and pretend again, trying to understand something too miraculous for the smallness of their minds.
I'm sure my beautiful Jesus most likely wasn't born once upon a December, there were most likely no reindeer or jolly old elves presiding, but I think that every aspect of this Universal celebration is precious. The giving, the snow or lack thereof that calls us into nature, the feasts we have to remind our family how much we love each other, the waiting and then the answering of the wait when love's vow is kept.
Life is so remarkable and exquisitely beautiful, so filled with impeccable detail and craftsmanship and sometimes I remember, most often around Christmas, that there is no requirement that says it had to be this way. We turned our backs on trust and love, and no one had to come running after to tap us on the shoulder. No one ever had to guarantee that humans could continue, could fall from grace and return to sit in it's lap, loved even more than before the journey. But it is like this. We are loved. And this much!
At Christmas it falls in warm showers of joy. Joy that this world, at it's essence is love-designed and each of us will continue in this eternity of creation and affection.
Every year when I wrestle with an adorable conifer, slip out into the new snow with a sled and eyes wide, munch cookies under the covers while the Grinch steals Christmas over and over again, I remember who I am and where I am going. I remember that I am God-loved and created. I remember the invite to the party I don't technically deserve to attend, but that I'm an honored guest at every December. The grand ball that all of space, time, heaven and earth take place in, is waiting for me to arrive to the celebration too. The celebration of God's infinite loving kindness, that He renews in us every year and urges us to replicate among each other.
So Christmas for me is very little about whatever waits for me under that plump and bedazzling pine, and very much about what waits for me at every moment of my life, a great and mysterious gift that I can tear the ribbons from and dive into anytime I'd like.
Christmas for me is an immersion in true life, God life, where beautiful surprises take place in misted hills like the ones outside my house, where if reindeer do fly maybe this year I'll catch them at it, where this is endlessly, endlessly more than what I see and register every day. There's a whole world of spirit, love and fairytale that's mine to enter if I would just choose to do it.
If I'd been there that trembling, miraculous night, hamming it up with my sheepy pals, I'd have gone tearing over those hills when angels plummeted like comets to where I stood and sang me the first carols. My heart would've broken to see Him, mortal like me, but pulsing with a patience and mercy that I can only dream of extending like He knows how. I would have been sore afraid too, but not because I could finally see, but for that I had lived life so blindly and it had taken a little boy to snap me back to consciousness and to take my place in His circle that begs us all to step in.
So Merry Christmas my sweetest of friends and fambly! I bet I'll write a little more as I go on, and the days zoom up faster and faster. We don't even have a tree yet this year and I haven't bought a darn present except for something very silly for my sister that involves narwhals and finger puppets. But Merry, Merry Christmas! May your hearts be light as the snow that better get here before the 24th if it doesn't want to deal with my outrage. May your hug and cuddle with all the ones you love, basking in the glow of all these lights, all this love. And I know that Christmas has gone commercial and garish and awful, but don't take the invitation the stores offer you. Keep the money in your checking account, and instead give kisses and candy canes and warm wishes and thoughtful prayers. Be in attendance with this weird kiddo, who will be bright eyed and bushy tailed all Christmas Eve, keeping a weather eye on the world outside the window and enjoying copious amounts of cocoa and cookies (hope Santa isn't too hungry this year!)
Have a holly jolly Christmas, a merry, laughing, warm Christmas and answer the call any way your heart hears it, to life ringing like bells for all of us, the whole Universe caroling to us at every home to go out and be one with the celebration of it all.
<3

Overwhelming Goodness

Lately, my sweet little blargh, I've been feeling over my head in life.
These beautiful days... I can feel the wonder and mystery of being able to be here on Earth, now, at such a fascinating time of life for people, but most of the time, I feel just plain scared. There's too much here, too much that needs to be done and taken care of, especially for an absentminded girl like me. There's too many forms I haven't filled out and sent in, too much money I'm sposed to have and don't cause I had to pay for a big lofty apartment, and pickles and lettuce and apples for the fridge, and then all that gasoline to get from the big lofty apartment to the Co-Op where I work to pay for it all.
There's just too much here. Too many parking tickets, restrictions, guidelines, things I'm sposed to be keeping track of. My license is expired, the high school still hasn't sent my (hopefully!) future college my transcripts, I haven't paid the electricity bill yet or sent a cheque to the nice lady who let us use her security deposit when she turned over the apartment to us. I forgot to clean up last night after peace pasta and giggling with Celly, the compost is full again and I spilled a ginger soda all over the hardwood floor last night.
Christmas, beautiful, graceful Christmas is hovering near and cozy on the horizon... and I haven't even barely had the time to steep in it's presence. I have to go to the adorable Co-Op, have to get prints ordered for all the wonderful people I took peektures for, have to somehow figure out how to manage a checking account and then set up PayPal online so I can get paid for peektures, the list of tasks is endless... have to lie down on the floor and cry because this is all just too much! How do people survive nowadays? I barely understand it...
How is it that once you're an adult, the world stops being it's magical self? I think that maybe it's only because when you're "grown up" you're far too busy to quietly watch all of the joy of it unfold. When you do have some free time, you're not sure what to do with yourself because your heart is sick with worry, so whole starry evenings get lost in front of the TV with alcoholic beverages.
I just remember my sweet blargh... I remember there being so much more, before everyone decided to be cool and become strangled by their careers and obligations.
The days used to be so full... but full of overwhelming goodness. I tore out of bed at 7 in the morning when I was little cause I had play to make happen, dinosaur instant oatmeal to eat, and big important matters to attend to outside. If it was Christmastime... well... then there were snowmen to build, icicles to steal from the overhang of the garage, giant hills to be conquered in my big green sled, Christmas specials to watch, and cookies to pilfer from the kitchen. I remember long winter days full of nothing but Bing Crosby singing to me about wonderland, Barbie dolls in my lap in outrageous outfits and hot chocolate in a mug at my side.
When did it become uncool to enjoy life?!?
Why is it no longer socially acceptable to mess around like I did when I was little. Now if I'm an adult and outside, I have to be doing some sort of activity that's considered normal and productive like cross-country skiing or tracking partridges. I love chasing partridges but I just don't understand why I'm not supposed to be playing around anymore! Why can't people my age go swimming, sledding or fort-building without toting a chest of beers along with them? Why does everything I want to do in life have a price-tag of shame stapled to it?
I'm just not sure I understand... I know that having a fun place to stay with people you love is important and I'm more than willing to pay for one, more than willing to zoom up to the Co-Op and spend my days unwrapping boxes of yogurt and making people veggie wraps, more than willing even to pay for the fun of the Christmas lights strung around my bed that turn on when I plug them in (magic!). I'm happy to pay for what it takes to keep the lofty apartment warmer inside than it is outside, willing to vacuum and mop up all the sodas I'm inevitably going to bless the floor with, but I'm not willing to sacrifice the great happiness that God is showering each of us with every single second, that we just shrug off because we have so much stuff on our shoulders already that we can't even handle the extra weight that a little fairy dust requires.
My heart and Lulu being was made of adventure and breaking out of all these dumbo boxes people keep around themselves. People have been quite disappointed with me because I don't like to play by certain rules, but that's because rules are sometimes estupido! Freedom is important and it's precious and sacred and everyone should relish it with all their hearts. Here in A Merry Ca where we're so unbelievably fortunate to practically do whatever we want whenever we want to do it, we should be freaking out!
I can go stand on the sidewalk right now and sing wassails to every person who walks by me, but of course I won't because I'd get punched in the nose, because having fun and being weird isn't acceptable. People have got to be safe and normal and conform at all times or else they're "nerds" and this and that and God help us all if we don't all wear the latest fashions, drive a Mercedes and be miserable like everyone else.
Had it, I have! Life is about joy and all of that corny loving, caring, sharing goodness. Life isn't normal! This is all the most surreal thing that will ever happen to us, and I want to just go crazy in it. I want to take risks, possibly even dumb ones. Why shouldn't I? I didn't ask to be here, I didn't create myself out of moonlight and  a little clay, my sweet God thought of me and thought I was nice enough to make!
Sweet cheez-whiz! I get to be here because I was an idea that God loved, so He made me happen. I'll be darned like a sock if I lay around with a cold one in my hand because I can't think of anything better to do, and life sucks because I don't live it and I expect to be entertained before I die, unfulfilled.
Here is what I, a very weird Lulu think; I think it's crazy what people have set up! This whole system is completely nuts and all these guidelines for who I'm supposed to be as a person, as a woman, are nuts, and I don't think I can bear to listen to them anymore.
I think I'm pretty decent the way I am, and I don't need to be 90 pounds with a disproportionate amount of voluptuousness, wearing whatever name people have slapped onto silly clothes and insisted that are awesome and need to be worn by everyone. I don't need to wear bikinis (they're practically impossible to have water fights in), I don't need to drink alcohol or smoke anything, I don't need to go to this school and get certain pieces of paper. I need to be alive, and to be Lulu, and above all, to be profoundly grateful for each and every moment that rushes by me, never to be seen again.
I'm tired of taking this all for granted, I'm tired of trying to be normal and safe. God has set the beautiful boundaries that protect my heart. Everything else is open pasture. If I get lost somewhere, He'll come and find me like He promises. I just don't want myself, or anyone else to be mad or sad at themselves anymore. I want for it to be okay to mess up, even big time, and to simply learn from it. No one needs to drag around their past and mourn every detail of the choices they made. For each situation there is the right thing to do and the wrong thing, and if you somehow managed to pick the right one every single time in your life, you would be Jesus.
But since you're not, everything is forgivable and forgettable. I don't care about what the standards are, I'm not going to carry a grudge or be bitter towards anyone. There are people who have made me sad in my lifetime, just as there are in everyones life ( I AM one of those people to someone else) but I'm not going to carry that sadness. In the end, it was mostly me who made me sad and I'm not even going to be mad at myself either. Love is the answer to each of my worries, to each situation that I've been put in where I said either the right or wrong thing, and I know that love will come pouring out of my story in the end.
I decided a long time ago when I was little, that I wouldn't hate anyone, especially for making me sad, but instead I would try to see things from where they stood and like them anyways and people have thought badly of me for it, but I'm tired of being expected to be angry and bitter like so many of my dear friends here.
I want to be happy. I want to run around and hoot and holler. I want to reject the things that society has asked me to embrace because "everyone's doing it". Just the fact that almost everyone I know struggles with alcohol at least occasionally makes me resolved to never really touch the stuff. If everyone's doing it then I want to find my own thing to do. I'll develop a grapefruit juice problem.
At the end my dear little blargh, after all this ranting and raving, what I mean by it is that the return to innocence that everyone's deepest heart is craving is found by simply returning to it instead of moping that it's lost (which is what I've been doing hehe).
Bring on the sunshine and guacamole and silly adventures!
Bring on all this overwhelming goodness, I want to greet it every single day with all the happiness I have!

Gee, thanks

If I say I'm most grateful for love,
I think that I'll have to name
Everything
Here, in fumbling words that don't explain it right
If for the sunshine,
I would have to tell you how it floats golden
Makes the snow glittering down blankets
Heats the river I plunge into and
Grin at the fishes from high where it winks on the surface
If I tell you I'm grateful for family
Then what names would I give you?
Father, sister, brother, kind beloved
The man who laughs with me at the checkout line
About how incredible coffee is
The people spread out all around the globe today
Where it's not a national holiday
Just a good one
Can a poem fit 7 billion names?
This is my family after all
Emmanuel, God with us
All of us
Not just the ones I know and keep close in a circle
All of us with something today
To smile and fold hands for
Our favorite foods close at hand
Kitten curled up on the comforter
The flavor of strawberries
The meetings and the partings
You and I, the moments divine that we hugged each other close
And the ones so painful and right
When we knew it was time to unlock the fingers and let go
The surprises
Birthday presents
The songs I belted out in the car for the steering wheel
The shoes and sandals that bore me over hill and plain
The piano melody you named for me
The sparrows, the cardinals that chorused me awake
Oh, for roses, for ducklings, for thunder showers
Rainbows and garden carts, the passing glance of kindness
That was the only way I've ever known you
For bravery, for pizza and pillow fights
For someone to talk to when something just didn't feel whole
Here we are grateful
For every time we remembered to play instead of pursue fame
When an arm went around our shoulder
Or we straightened our spines tenderly
In order to be more truly ourselves
Here's to pumpkin pie!
To glasses not half-full or empty but brimming
With a zillion miracles a day
All in tiny, fleeting droplets
That combined create an ocean
To drink from at every moment
So that we are never thirsty again
But drowning in this love, this abundance, all this caring kindness
That falls from Heaven like all this sun and rain and snow
We are drenched in Thanksgiving at all times
If we would only name it like we do today
There is too much to be thankful for
A desperate urge to give it all a voice
But let today be for chestnut stuffing
And our nearest and dearest brothers and sisters
Let today remind us
That at all times, there is blessing
A thousand times more than there is curse
Every little cell of all there is
Holds affection for mankind
We need only look at any tiny thing
To know that we have so much to say grace for
So much to live grace for
All we can come up with is to feast today
To somehow manage to take in
All these beautiful things

Here we are, just outside of the glow of Christmas
Slushy, laughing snow for Thanksgiving
Every arc of the lofts shimmering with tiny lights
A candle here
A chocolate there
The board game I left by the window
Socks I yanked off toes with a gleeful sigh
Here a home,
There we are
Reflections peeping down onto the streetlamps below
The tree coated in frost
All the evening waiting for eucharist
To pour out with the cider and inside jokes
Fingers folding into the lap
Brush of lips to brow
Tomorrow is a banquet
Platters filled with all that truly matters
Lest, save for this one annual Thursday
We all forget
That we are immaterial
And the green stamped paper
Means very little when compared with your smile
For me over the cranberries
And the great Togetherness
Oh, I am glad
For this day and for all days
When you and I are rosy's ringing the table
Every posy the world has for us now
Twinkling bright in the ash
If I ever forget
That nothing, nothing can ever be taken for granted
And truly loved
Felt with the hand, and the soul
If you and I are to make these moments meaningful
Whatever the daylight brings
Gratitude must fall from our lips
So that the old insults and stinging words
Have no place to stand
And are forgotten
Let's all tangle our fingers
Our sympathies
Until we are at last, united
When the bumblebee and the sheathe of hay
Are appreciated again
When "thank you" is more than manners
But becomes instead the breath
Inhale and taste that you belong
To God, to yourself,
To the grand cosmos who grinned when it thought of you
Look and see that it's true of everyone else
Your eyes fall on
Break the bread, and never another heart
Let your life become the candles tenderness
As it tosses the light to friendly faces
Let every day, holy
Be named Thanksgiving