Happy New Year

Instead of making resolutions this first day of 2010, I want to be grateful for all my blessings. I am especially grateful for my family and my friends (family we get to pick!), for my heath and my generally optimistic nature. I am grateful for the physical beauty of this Earth. I am grateful for time spend on or near waters. I am extremely grateful for my easy life. I am truly, truly blessed and I don't ever want to take any of it for granted.

And to you, Dear Reader, I wish a healthy, happy 2010.



The art of blessing the day

by Marge Piercy

This is the blessing for rain after drought:

Come down, wash the air so it shimmers,

a perfumed shawl of lavender chiffon.

Let the parched leaves suckle and swell.

Enter my skin, wash me for the little

chrysalis of sleep rocked in your lashing.

in the morning the world is peeled and shining.

This is the blessing for sun after long rain:

Now everything shakes itself free and rises.

The trees are bright as pushcart ices.

Every last lily opens its satin thighs.

The bees dance and roll in pollen

and the cardinal at the top of the pine

sings at full throttle, fountaining.

This is the blessing for the first garden tomato:

those green boxes of tasteless acid the store

sells in January, those red things with the savor

of wet chalk, they mock your fragrant name.

How fat and sweet you are weighing down my palm,

warm as the flank of a cow in the sun.

You are the savor of summer in thin red skin.

This is the blessing for a political victory:

Although I shall not forget that things

work in increments and epicycles and sometime

leaps that half the time fall back down,

let's not relinquish dancing while the music

fits into our hips and bounces our heels.

We must never forget, pleasure is real as pain

The blessing for the return of a favorite cat,

the blessing for love returned, for friends'

return, for money received unexpected,

the blessing for the rising of the bread,

the sun, the oppressed. I am not sentimental

about old men mumbling the Hebrew by rote

with no more feeling than one says gesundheit

But the discipline of blessings is to taste

each moment, the bitter, the sour, the sweet

and the salty, and be glad for what does not

hurt. The art in compressing attention

toe each little and big blossom of the tree

of life, to let the tongue sing each fruit,

its savor, its aroma and its use.

Attention is love, what we must give
children, mothers, fathers, pets,
our friends, the news, the woes of others.
What we want to change we curse and then
pick up a tool. Bless whatever you can
with eyes and hands and tongue. If you
can't bless it, get ready to make it new.