This Thanksgiving week is my annual poetry show with my guest and friend Jayne Jaudon Ferrer. Please click on the link below and enjoy the show. If you’d like to join Your Daily Poem please visit www.YourDailyPoem.com to sign up.
Here are a few of my favorite poems from the show~please listen to the podcast for the full, funny, delightful show we had this week…you’ll be glad you did.
The Guppy ~ Ogden Nash
Whales have calves, Cats have kittens, Bears have cubs, Bats have bittens, Swans have cygnets, Seals have puppies, But guppies just have little guppies.
Prayer of Thanks ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
For each new morning with its light, For rest and shelter of the night, For health and food, for love and friends, For everything Thy goodness sends.
Peace ~ Melody Beattie
Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.
Finding Joy This Season ~ Regina Riddle
To find the greatest joy, give selflessly. Share your gifts, your time, your love – be the smile others long to see!
To find your heart’s content, show gratitude. Open your eyes and give thanks for life – walk with a hopeful attitude!
To find desired love, Love others with God’s eyes. Search beyond the surface seen – you may be quite surprised!
To find your Christmas spirit, return to innocence. Slow down, have fun, believe again – remember the Lord’s presence!
Gratitude ~ Barbara Crooker
This week, the news of the world is bleak, another war grinding on, and all these friends down with cancer, or worse, a little something long term that they won’t die of for twenty or thirty miserable years—
And here I live in a house of weathered brick, where a man with silver hair still thinks I’m beautiful. How many times have I forgotten to give thanks? The late day sun shines through the pink wisteria with its green and white leaves as if it were stained glass, there’s an old cherry tree that one lucky Sunday bloomed with a rainbow: cardinals, orioles, goldfinches, blue jays, indigo buntings, and my garden has tiny lettuces just coming up, so perfect they could make you cry: Green Towers, Red Sails, Oak Leaf. For this is May, and the whole world sings, gleams, as if it were basted in butter, and the air’s sweet enough to send a diabetic into shock—
And at least today, all the parts of my body are working, the sky’s clear as a china bowl, leaves murmur their leafy chatter, finches percolate along. I’m doodling around this page, know sorrow’s somewhere beyond the horizon, but still, I’m riffing on the warm air, the wingbeats of my lungs that can take this all in, flush the heart’s red peony, then send it back without effort or thought.
And the trees breathe in what we exhale, clap their green hands in gratitude, bend to the sky.
From Line Dance (Word Press, 2008). This poem first appeared in Poetry East.
In Praise of Doorsteps ~ Janice Canerdy
I think of sunsets I have seen throughout my many years from doorsteps where in quiet thought I’ve laughed and wiped my tears.
The doorstep is a thinking spot a place to share my day with loved ones God has given me, an altar where I pray.
For children it’s a special seat for rest when school work ends, where snacks and many laughs are shared with kindred-spirit friends.
For youths it is a meeting place where games and dates are planned. The simple structure serves us all, according to demand.
Great praise is due life’s doorsteps, both intangible and seen, and all the portals fore and aft for all they truly mean.
To hear the rest of the poems we shared on the show please click the podcast link below.
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