Gratitude

Some days the love just wells up inside of me

and it is frightening to contemplate

the magnitude and breadth of my place

in Creation’s scheme;

A gratitude for life, for the creatures in it,

the diversity and color and timbre of voices,

abundance of individuality;

goodness of the ground I am

privileged to cultivate.

 

Trees that allow me to climb them,

bare feet gripping branches where hang

round-bodied orbs impossible to consume

in their profusion – meant of course

to share, to give away,

fulfilling fruit’s ambition to spread seed.

 

Folks come to Hawai’i and head for the beach

to warm winter-weary limbs in a viscous bath of salt,

and though I am a swimmer, it is to the land I am drawn.

Stepping out my back lanai in the late afternoon to water,

arcing streams of salvation to each green and growing thing;

even unto a plethora of flowers to which I surrender delight.

Years of harsh winters before arriving on these shores

and I couldn’t bear to watch fragile petals crumple;

dead stalks propped up with frost.

 

Gazing up over the tops of giant Norfolk pines,

the sun pales to a palette of pinks and golds,

enfolding the land in the indigo twilight of evening.