So You Want to Give Thanks

So you want to give thanks, do you?

By counting up your contraptions

that compartmentalize your life?

By adding up square footage and retirement funds and

calling it blessing?

By revising your own history

so all roads are smooth and all

divergent paths forgotten for the pain they inflicted?

So you want to give thanks, do you?

Give thanks for that day back in June

when you dropped your phone in the toilet

and you spent the evening talking to your son

as you looked into his achingly beautiful blue eyes.

Give thanks for the wildfires that

called you to give away your excess to those in ashes

and you spent the night making love in utter freedom.

Give thanks for your life’s wrong turns,

getting lost in foggy night driving

and giving up the destination for the ride.

These, not the others,

brought you to this day,

this inexplicable moment of your being,

where you see it all for its gorgeous confounding mystery

and you weep that you have breath at all.

So give your thanks, do not keep it.

Do it with your long withheld tears,

your holy offering to the Holy,

when all you lost and all you have to let go of

has finally freed you to peek behind the curtain

and know the imminent and transcendent embrace.