Thank you for the soft cry of seagulls at dawn
and for the quiet hours of early evening on rain-soaked days

Thank you for paper and pen
and for blurred thoughts
and dulled senses

Thank you for loss of control
and the faint light in the neighbour’s window

Thank you for the trickling sound of water in the gutters and chimney
and for the patience of an old friend who ages gracefully next to me

Thank you for the scent of food whose aromas invoke a faraway home
and for places to which we can never return

Thank you for a hard life
punctuated by tiny strokes of genius
and for the bounty of fortune that, at least once, ensued

Thank you for my country and this country
and for the known and unknown pairs of arms and hands that brought me here

Thank you for the gifts that I will never receive
and for the gift of never receiving them

Thank you for frailty and openness and exposure
and for the fear of falling
and for the fall

Thank you for the journeys that never end
and for hopeless dreams that beg us to differ

Thank you, for there is a shoreline on both sides
and countless untold truths between them

Thank you for the words and music
for all the bridges crossing steep valleys
and for canyons cutting through forgotten land

For all the things we should never forget
and scarcely recall

Thank you for the blood of it all
that courses while it can
and for the wee bit of light that stems the flow

© H. Hennenburg, 9 October 2010

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