Weekend Gratitude

a list, in no particular order.

I’m grateful for thyme and garlic and rain.

And writing and my fuzzy sweater, and spinach and eggs.

For my cat.

For cooking and sister and kids,

For sweetness and friendship and Shabbat.

I’m grateful for work, for family, for peace here and stability of ground.

For jeans, and my bike, and the marina.

For snow and love and salmon.

For books.

For time to read and write and wander

For night.

For the new moon, and Strawberry Creek and my hair.

For mom, for my skin and organs and tongue,

for milk.

For coffee and inspiration,

For chickens and hunters and farms

and dirt.

For worms

and learning and teenagers.

For neighbors

for sky

for chickens, bones, and compost.

For flies.

And the same mosquito eaters that fluttered on me as a kid

and now scare my niece.

For my niece. For Max and music and home.

For garden, for street sweepers spraying dust and laughter and stars.

For the dark.

For sadness, for anger, for the spokes on a wheel.

For coyote sage and purple sage and the purple flowers I picked on my walk

For poppies and Chinese food and immigrants

For the soft fur on my cat’s belly

and the way she lies across my face in the mornings.

For wet dew,

For spiders,

For my own little name.

And for breakfast and for cows and sheep and horses

For the sheepskin on my couch,

for pillows,

for a neck that doesn’t hurt today

and for community.

For fake sausages and feeling not alone.

For my nephew’s naked belly and the tiny bruise under his eye that he says is not a bruise, and that he doesn’t understand jokes about violence.

For Cool Runnings and Clueless and escapes from here and now.

For popcorn and for feminism

and shows about journalists pushing gender,

for language

for translation

for gifts and transcend generations

and land in our laps

For country roads

and John Denver

and for seventh graders.

For Ava and drums and surprises and chicken soup.

For Uncle Norm and the homestead he had in Hawaii

and for Hawaii

For all places colonized yet still flowering and lush with life.

For squirrels, bees, and strange plants I can’t identify

For wombs and medicine and those who make it.

For gatherings. For the desert. For home.