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
