Happy Thanksgiving! You know I try to subject you to as little of my actual poetry as possible, but since I wrote this poem a little while ago when a friend and I discussed keeping gratitude journals when we felt the most grumpy, and it seemed appropriate to the day, I thought I’d go ahead and post it:

Keeping a Gratitude Journal

For string beans, rubber bands, black cat calendars

green tea, green trees, tiny green frogs

envelope glue, mango lip balm, marabou

halter tops, high-heeled shoes, hair mousse

comic book heroes, Slavic jaw bones, cheese

scratching mosquito bites, the deep breath at the end of a swim

his face beneath your hands

your skin beneath a copper coin moon

your breath in and out slippery as fish

the can of sea glass half-full

that you still can applesauce by hand

that you can wake, one more morning, your one last chance.