Variations on a Theme
Thank you my life long afternoon
late in this spring that has no age
my window above the river
for the woman you led me to
when it was time at last the words
coming to me out of mid-air
that carried me through the clear day
and come even now to find me
for old friends and echoes of them
those mistakes only I could make
homesickness that guides the plovers
from somewhere they had loved before
they knew they loved it to somewhere
they had loved before they saw it
thank you good body hand and eye
and the places and moments known
only to me revisiting
once more complete just as they are
and the morning stars I have seen
and the dogs who are guiding me
--W.S. Merwin
Last Thanksgiving I posted a Merwin poem that some readers found a little too, let’s say ironic. So even though this is a poem of spring, there’s giving thanks in it. In that way it can be read as saying that gratitude can be felt any day, in this case in long old age, and perhaps Thanksgiving symbolizes that. For me this poem has the additional benefit of expressing several specific reasons for my own daily gratitude, including the (endangered) snowy plovers of our own North Coast beaches.
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