Thanks Giving

            Thank you for my fingers and my toes.  Thank you for the clock that ticks softly next to me and the sound of the water running through the pipes as Melissa takes her shower.  And for this window that lets me see out but keeps the warm in.  Thank you for the color of the early morning sky – how the edge glows gold while the vast space above shimmers the faintest purple.  And how the trees rise up slender and graceful—intricate dark lines traced effortlessly against the coming light.

             Thank you for my nose that secretes mucus and knows how to sniffle at just the right time.  And for the porcelain mug of steaming tea with silly blue lines around the rim that I am drinking from.  And thank you for the people who harvested the tea leaves and processed them and put the tea in shiny silver pouches in cardboard boxes.  And for the people that worked the ships and planes and trucks and trains that brought the tea from that unknown place to here.  And thank you for the young man who opened the carton and put the tea boxes on the shelf and the woman who took my wife’s money as she checked out.

             Oh yes, and thank you especially for my wife, the one in the shower, and for my daughter, the one in California.  And for my mother and fathers and sisters and brother and nieces and uncles and teachers and friends and colleagues and acquaintances – wherever they are.  And for everyone else who walks or sits or lies down on the face of this earth.  And for everything else that flies or runs or slithers or swims or grows or doesn’t grow in this world and in all the worlds beyond.

             Thank you for this everything that is beyond comprehension.  Thank you for beyond beyond.  For the electric mystery of the human heart and the nuclear wonder of stars and for starlight traveling unfathomable distances to tickle my fragile eyes.  And thank you for my third eye and my fourth eye and for all my eyes and hands and legs and tree trunks and houses and bombs and fighters and prisons and monasteries and whore houses and banks and TVs and couches and fingers—ah yes—thank you for the fingers.