Now, this is how to give thanks!

Poem in Thanks, Thomas Lux

Lord Whoever, thank you for this air

I’m about to in- and exhale, this hutch

in the woods, the wood for fire,

the light – both lamp and the natural stuff

of leaf-back, fern, and wing.

For the piano, the shovel

for ashes, the moth-gnawed

blankets, the stone-cold water

stone-cold:  thank you.

Thank you, Lord, coming for

to carry me here – where I’ll gnash

it out, Lord, where I’ll calm

and work, Lord, thank you

for the goddam birds singing!

“Good Poems, Selected and Introduced by Garrison Keillor,” Penguin Group,

      Viking Press, New York, 2002 (page 3).