GIFTS

 

This is what the living do:

we wake up each morning to the day,
grateful for the waking,

our beds a time capsule,

carrying us through years

of dreams and memories.

I closed my eyes, in bliss, at forty,
on the shores of Clayoquot Sound.

When I opened them this morning,

incomprehensibly, I am seventy-six,
- here, once again,
and still -
in my heart's home.
The greatest gift of all.

I put out seed for the morning sparrows,

watch them hopping, while I make

my cup of tea, because

this is what the living do; we have

our rituals, our small comforts,

our ways of coping, our day after day

of sameness, moving us inexorably

to an unknown day up ahead.

Meanwhile, we remember

to cherish these small blessings,

this glorious ordinary, more special

than we know.

I remember

to be grateful for the gifts.

Yesterday I carried my brown bag

of groceries home from the CoOp.

The sun was so warm; two smiling friends

walked towards me. We stopped,

a careful ten feet apart, and chatted,
because the virus is still here,
wary and mutated.

We talked about our hair, which is long
and needed cutting even before

the virus. We stood there,

laughing in the sun, hands poking at our heads,

glad to have seen and spoken with other humans

on this sunny warm morning

in Clayoquot Sound.

The waves were big yesterday; the surfers

were happy. I walked to the big log and sat,

watched the breakers come rolling in,

felt my heart expand with the prayer I recite

every time I am there: thank you, thank you,

thank you, for this: for the gift of living here,

twice given, for the beauty,

for the many gifts I have been given.

This is what the living do: we remember.

On this beach, I once walked for miles and years

with an exuberant, big black wolf.

And now I live alone.

I visit the sea. I am still living,

less exuberantly, but no less gratefully.

I remember him.

I remember it all.

for  Ingrid at dVerse where the topic is gifts. I have been given so many, all my life. I am aging ever so gratefully. I adapted this poem from one written earlier during covid. But some of us seniors are still having to be careful, as the mutations are still about, and we are vulnerable.