Hello friends,
We’ll enjoy our penultimate reflection on ‘Intentionality’ this Saturday.
I saw this poem by Jeanne Lohmann today, and I thought to share it.
Here’s a link to it and three other poems that should reorient your soul and steps, should you need a course change: Selected Poems by Jeanne Lohmann
The poem is used without permission, though I’m assuming the late Ms. Lohmann would be pleased to have her work shared if properly attributed.
Today’s photo is from two years ago. I’ve posted it before — unframed — but it was popular then, and today it strangely fits the mood circling Maine, wet cold, winter nipping at our heels. Something in the black and white, the splash of autumn-like color. This is a sunflower moving toward Thanksgiving. (And, happy coincidence, dandelions are members of the sunflower family.)
Until,Saturday.
*****
To Say Nothing But Thank You
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 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.
***
