A Barely-Beginning-to-Count-Life's-Blessings Poem

 On this American Thanksgiving Day it behooves all of us, 

no matter where in the world we live to pause and name our blessings!

For breath of lily on the vine

For birth of day, soft-tangerine

For feet to meet and greet its race

For skies that fill our eyes with grace

For field and garden-harvest reaped

For yield in barns and cellars heaped

For tables laden lavishly

To share with friends and family

To God we render songs of praise

For tender mercy all our days

For innocence of girl and boy

To fill the hoary heart with joy

For hope’s immortal diocese

To help us cope in times like these

For spring and summer, winter, fall

To crown the dirt that bears our gall

For night’s respite, star-frothed and still

For dawn to drive it from yon hill

For peace that comes from Thee, dear Lord

And heaven for blind faith’s reward

For poetry that word unchains

For rain bejeweled windowpanes

For Unknown’s unexpected thrills

For faces mirrored in milk-spills

For practice-makes-perfect-Today

For songs to sing our blues away

For coffee-bronze and opal pond

For November’s glass-frosted frond

For pleasantries too rife to count

We kiss the Hand that fills life’s fount

For nature’s utter disregard

To tease the hunger of Her bard

For vows of love honoured with aches

While we learn, often through mistakes

For friendship of both folk and flow’r

For tolerance of idling’s hour

For afternoons to squander where

The brook sings blue past grass-green chair

For boon of books as splurge of quill

Transports its pioneer at will

For songsters of feathers and wings

For nature’s infallible strings

Where lute of breeze and flute of dusk

Composes melodies, blue-brusque

To tug at heart-of-heart spun sighs

Keened by love’s helloes and good-byes

For storehouses of laughter-tears

To make tangible yester-years

For life-laws learned as time unfurls

Men and women from boys and girls

For touch and taste of much too much

For bread to break and brooms and such

For eager why of curious child

For loosed-leaf cartwheels, wind-swept, wild

For time’s kind antidote for grief

Though oft accused of being Thief

For tapestry of past designed

To fill the landscape of the mind

For morning, fresh from God to man

With Mercy’s patient ‘try-again’

For dreams to keep fear’s fiends at bay

For One who hears us when we pray

For green of youth and silvered sage

For truth to teach at any age

For hands to hold and lips to kiss

To comfort when life seems amiss

For much still free from moneyed ranks

To overflow our hearts with thanks

As Conscience and worship behoove

We name God’s countless gifts of love

For blessings so common we fret

Because their kindness we forget

For twilight rites to brush away

The shrapnel of life’s gold and gray

As shadows toll Time’s olden gong

That ‘Nothing stays the same for long’

For havens of earth’s home-sweet-homes

For supper-table reunions

For hymns to phrase soul-praise’s laud

We thank you, thank you, thank you, God

For Your Lamplight of Holy Word

To guide this soul-breathed tide, oh Lord

For ageless promises to cheer

And no world-stage can commandeer

For morn-noon-night-trained evidence

Of One Creator’s Providence

As ignorance of human-race

Drinks from wellsprings of perfect grace

For lanes soft-fringed with chicory

Which ramble from and to Mercy

For the fresh framework of Today

For the Name Jesus, born to save

For more than this world to live for

Time’s touchdown but an Awesome Door

Where none which pass through will return

Ah, who can dare God’s grace to spurn?

For He who paid sin’s awful cost

With His Son so none need be lost

For such a Worthy King we sing

And thank you, God, for everything

© Janet Martin