Thank Offering

But these days we find it difficult
to face a feast with easy stomachs.
Guilt, that queasy, well-fed luxury,
has robbed us of the revelry of banqueting
while others waste from hunger.
 
Thanks do break in, however,
here and there, beyond the groaning board,
for bare trees to wander through, a daring child
to wonder “Why?”, for one spare day to taste
the last sharp apple-tang of Fall,
gleaning ripe memories of a twelvemonth passing,
or of other days like this one, other years,
when life rose tall in reverie, death seemed almost mellow,
for a crisp foretaste of the dark and ice that wait,
spiced with a secret confidence that fire will warm
and light us yet into another Spring that hopes eternal,
for an essential rightness, which breathes –
despite the headlines and the daily hurt –
through every pore of this rare day and names it
bright and good, and claims the whole,
in every worn and broken part, for God…
such are the thanks we murmur to the living air.

Send your comment on this report to The Outlook
          Please include your full name, hometown and state.