All day I try to say nothing but thank you,
breathe the syllables in and out with every step I
take through the rooms of my house and outside into
a profusion of shaggy-headed dandelions in the garden
where the tulips’ black stamens shake in their crimson cups.
I am saying thank you, yes, to this burgeoning spring
and to the cold wind of its changes. Gratitude comes easy
after a hot shower, when my loosened muscles work,
when eyes and mind begin to clear and even unruly
hair combs into place.
Dialogue with the invisible can go on every minute,
and with surprising gaiety I am saying thank you as I
remember who I am, a woman learning to praise
something as small as dandelion petals floating on the
steaming surface of this bowl of vegetable soup,
my happy, savoring tongue.
~Jeanne Lohmann “To Say Nothing But Thank You”
Returned from long travel, I sit
in the familiar, sun-streaked pew, waiting
for the bread and wine of holy Communion.
The old comfort does not rise in me, only
apathy and bafflement.
What shall we do about this?” I asked
my God…
~Jane Kenyon from “Woman, Why Are You Weeping?”
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.
Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
~Jane Kenyon “Let Evening Come”
We resist nightfall in our lives.
We fear the dark of violence and threats of war,
the suffering of innocent people who are harmed directly,
and those harmed by lack of resources
which go to bomb-making and dropping.
I wish I could remain forever sunshiny, vital and irreplaceable, living each moment with the energy I feel at dawn.
Yet I know that the forward momentum of time
inevitably winds me down to twilight.
We are not alone in our need to catch our breath,
to be still and grateful for each little thing –
each petal, each taste, each sun ray illuminating the dark.
What shall we do about this? we ask our God.
We savor what we will, with gratitude, as evening comes.
There is no stopping it as
our lungs fill with the breath of God, our Creator.
We are not left comfortless.
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