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Praise What
Comes
Comes
surprising as unplanned
kisses, all you haven't deservedof days and solitude, your body's immoderate
good health that lets you work in many kinds of weather.
Praise
kisses, all you haven't deservedof days and solitude, your body's immoderate
good health that lets you work in many kinds of weather.
Praise
talk with just about
anyone. And quiet intervals, books
that are your food and your hunger;
nightfall and walksbefore sleep. Praising these for practice,
perhaps you will come at last to
praise grief and the wrongs
you never intended. At the end there may be
no answers
and only a few very simple questions:
anyone. And quiet intervals, books
that are your food and your hunger;
nightfall and walksbefore sleep. Praising these for practice,
perhaps you will come at last to
praise grief and the wrongs
you never intended. At the end there may be
no answers
and only a few very simple questions:
did I love?
finish my task in the
world? Learn at least one
of the many names of God? At the
intersections,the boundaries where one life began and another
world? Learn at least one
of the many names of God? At the
intersections,the boundaries where one life began and another
ended, the jumping-off
places between fear and
possibility, at the ragged edges of pain, did I
catch the smallest glimpse of the holy?
places between fear and
possibility, at the ragged edges of pain, did I
catch the smallest glimpse of the holy?
~ Jeanne Lohmann ~
(The Light of Invisible
Bodies)
Bodies)
To Say Nothing But Thank You
by Jeanne Lohmann
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
streaming surface of the bowl of vegetable soup,
my happy, savoring tongue.
-- published in the May 2009 issue of The Sun