Thanksgiving Hymn

I did not want to sing a hymn of praise
in the years of plague, in an age of shootings,
the ascension of the creeps.
with the demagogues, kleptocrats, the bigots,
the genocides & melting glaciers,
& people of every politic setting aside love.
Wasn’t I mostly powerless, except in inconsequential
ways? Built, as I was, as poets are, to feel
each travesty & collapse at the level of my own cells
dividing, how could I pray thanks during the police murders,
with the superstorms & starvation, with the billionaires
climbing us all like so many corpses
as if they could ever reach heaven? But
I woke this morning to find an astonishing
light draped across the sleeping face of my wife
& I dared not breathe until a cloud passed outside
the window & tugged it away. & there was the stubbornness
of the only red maple still holding its scarlet
leaves against the November gusts
also the blue jay who landed so close
I could have kissed it. Even the smell of something
delicious from the direction of the neighbors
& scraps of Duke Ellington falling from the window
of a young man’s passing tricked-out car
as I walked toward the stone bridge where the sunrise
was waiting & I saw someone fall from a bicycle
only to be surrounded by strangers,
one checking for wounds, another offering water,
a third testing the bike itself, the rest waiting
to see if they’d be needed, if there was any
way they could help. For decades
I did not say aloud the name of the hand
of love I could sometimes feel myself bumping
against as I clumsied & improvised
my way toward today, but all along it was a second
heartbeat in me, a breath underneath my breathing,
the silence in between footsteps,
a peace in that handful of moments
when I was granted, briefly, a happiness
not without sorrow, but with it lying
curled up on the floor, momentarily asleep.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, if you celebrate. I hope you have a blessed day, and are sourrounded with love.