Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude

Friends
Will you bear with me today
For I have awakened from a dream
In which a robin made with its shabby wings a kind of veil
Behind which it shimmied and stomped something from the south of spain
Its breast aflare
Looking me dead in the eye
From the branch that grew into my window
Coochie-cooing my chin
The bird shuffling its little talons left, then right
While the leaves bristled against the plaster wall
Two of them drifting onto my blanket while the bird
Opened and closed its wings like a matador
Giving up on murder
Jutting its beak
Turning a circle and flashing, again
The ruddy bombast of its breast
By which I knew upon waking
It was telling me
In no uncertain terms
To bellow forth the tubas and sousaphones
The whole rusty brass band of gratitude
Not quite dormant in my belly
It said so in a human voice
"Bellow forth"
And who among us could ignore such odd and precise counsel?

Hear ye!
Hear ye!
I am here to holler that I have hauled tons
By which I don't mean lots, I mean tons of cowshit
And stood ankle deep in swales of maggots
Swirling the spent beer grains
The brewery man was good enough to dump off
Holding his nose, for they smell very bad
But make the compost writhe giddy and lick its lips
Twirling dung with my pitchfork, again and again
With hundreds and hundreds of other people
We dreamt an orchard this way
Furrowing our brows
And hauling our wheelbarrows
And sweating through our shirts
And less than a year later there was a party
At which trees were sunk into the well-fed earth
One of which, a liberty apple
After being watered in was tamped by a baby barefoot
With a bow hanging in her hair
Biting her lip in her joyous work
And friends this is the realest place I know
It makes me squirm like a worm I am so grateful
You could ride your bike there
Or roller skate or catch the bus
There is a fence and a gate twisted by hand
There is a fig tree taller than you in Indiana
It will make you gasp
It might make you want to stay alive even
Thank you

And thank you
For not taking my pal when the engine
Of his mind dragged him
To swig fistfuls of Xanax and a bottle or two of booze
And thank you for taking my father
A few years after his own father went down, thank you
Mercy
Mercy
Thank you
For not smoking meth with your mother
Oh thank you
Thank you for leaving and for coming back
And thank you for what inside my friends' love
Bursts like a throng of roadside goldenrod
Gleaming into the world
Likely hauling a shovel with her
Like one named Aralee ought
With hands big as a horse's
And who, like one named Aralee ought
Will laugh time to time 'til the juice
Runs from her nose
Oh, thank you for the way a small thing's wail makes
The milk or what once was milk
In us gather into horses
Huckle-buckling across a field

And thank you, friends
When last spring
The hyacinth bells rang
And the crocuses flaunted their upturned skirts
And a quiet roved the beehive
Which, when I entered were snugged two or three dead
Fist-sized clutches of bees between the frames
Almost clinging to one another
This one's tiny head pushed
Into another's tiny wing
One's forelegs resting on another's face
The translucent paper of their wings fluttering
Beneath my breath and when
A few dropped to the frames beneath
Honey
And after falling down to cry
Everything's glacial shine

And thank you, too
And thanks for the corduroy couch I have put you on
Put your feet up
Here's a light blanket, a pillow, dear one
For I think this is going to be long
I can't stop
My gratitude, which includes, dear reader, you
For staying here with me
For moving your lips just so as I speak
Here is a cup of tea
I have spooned honey into it

And thank you, the tiny bee's shadow
Perusing these words as I write them
And the way my love talks quietly
When in the hive
So quietly, in fact, you cannot hear her
But only notice barely her lips moving in conversation
Thank you what does not scare her in me
But makes her reach my way
Thank you, the love she is which hurts sometimes
And the time she misremembered elephants in one of my poems
Which, oh, here they come
Garlanded with morning glory and wisteria blooms
Trombones all the way down to the river
Thank you, the quiet
In which the river bends around the elephant's solemn trunk
Polishing stones
Floating on its gentle back
The flock of geese flying overhead

And to the quick and gentle flocking of men to the old lady falling down
On the corner of fairmount and 18th
Holding patiently with the softest parts of their hands
Her cane and purple hat
Gathering for her the contents of her purse
And touching her shoulder and elbow
Thank you, the cockeyed court
On which in a half-court 3-on-3
We oldheads made of some runny-nosed kids a shambles
And the 61-year-old, after flipping a reverse lay-up
Off a back door cut from my no-look pass to seal the game
Ripped off his shirt and threw punches at the gods
And hollered at the kids to admire the pacemaker's scar
Grinning across his chest
Thank you, the glad accordion's wheeze in the chest
Thank you, the bagpipes

Thank you to the woman barefoot in a gaudy dress
For stopping her car in the middle of the road
And the tractor trailer behind her
And the van behind it
Whisking a turtle off the road
Thank you, god of gaudy
Thank you, paisley panties
Thank you, the organ up my dress
Thank you, the sheer dress you wore kneeling in my dream
At the creek's edge and the light swimming through it
The koi kissing halos into the glassy air
The room in my mind with the blinds drawn
Where we nearly injure each other
Crawling into the shawl of the other's body
Thank you for saying it plain
We fuck each other dumb

And you, again, you, for the true kindness
It has been for you to remain awake with me like this
Nodding time to time and making that noise which I take to mean
Yes, or
I understand, or
Please go on but not too long, or
Why are you spitting so much, or
Easy tiger, hands to yourself
I am excitable
I am sorry
I am grateful
I just want us to be friends now, forever
Take this bowl of blackberries from the garden
The sun has made them warm
I picked them just for you
I promise, I will stay on my side of the couch

And thank you, the baggie of dreadlocks I found in a drawer
While washing and folding the clothes of our murdered friend
The photo in which his arm slung
Around the sign to "The Trail of Silences"
Thank you, the way before he died
He held his hands open to us
For coming back in a waft of incense
Or in the shape of a boy in another city looking
From between his mother's legs
Or disappearing into the stacks after brushing by
For moseying back in dreams where
Seeing us lost and scared
He put his hand on our shoulders
And pointed us to the temple across town

And thank you to the man all night long
Hosing a mist on his early-bloomed peach tree
So that the hard frost not waste the crop
The ice in his beard
And the ghosts lifting from him when the warming sun told him
"Sleep now"
Thank you, the ancestor who loved you before she knew you
By smuggling seeds into her braid for the long journey
Who loved you before he knew you
By putting a walnut tree in the ground
Who loved you before she knew you by not slaughtering the land
Thank you, who did not bulldoze the ancient grove of dates and olives
Who sailed his keys into the ocean
And walked softly home
Who did not fire
Who did not plunge the head into the toilet
Who said "Stop, don't do that"
Who lifted some broken someone up
Who volunteered the way a plant birthed of the reseeding plant is called a volunteer
Like the plum tree that marched beside the raised bed in my garden
Like the arugula that marched itself between the blueberries
Nary a bayonet
Nary an army
Nary a nation
Which, usage of the word volunteer familiar to gardeners
The wide world made my pal shout, "Oh!"
And dance
And plunge his knuckles into the lush soil before gobbling two strawberries
And digging a song from his guitar
Made of wood from a tree someone maybe planted, thank you

Thank you zinnia, and gooseberry, rudbeckia and pawpaw
Ashmead's kernel, cockscomb and scarlet runner
Feverfew and lemonbalm
Thank you knitbone and sweetgrass and sunchoke
And false indigo whose petals stammered apart by bumblebees
Good Lord, please give me a minute
And moonglow and catkin and crookneck
And painted tongue and seedpod and johnny jump-up
Thank you what in us rackets glad
What gladrackets us

And thank you, too, this knuckleheaded heart
This pelican heart
This gap-toothed heart flinging open its gaudy maw to the sky
Oh clumsy
Oh bumblefucked
Oh giddy
Oh dumbstruck
Oh rickshaw
Oh goat twisting its head at me from my peach tree's highest branch
Balanced impossibly gobbling the last fruit
Its tongue working like an engine
A lone sweet drop tumbling by some miracle
Into my mouth like the smell of someone I've loved
Heart like an elephant screaming
At the bones of its dead
Heart like the lady on the bus
Dressed head to toe in gold
The sun shivering her shiny boots
Singing Erykah Badu to herself
Leaning her head against the window

And thank you to the way my father one time came back in a dream
By plucking the two cables beneath my chin
Like a bass fiddle's strings
And played me until I woke singing
No kidding, I was singing and smiling
Thank you, thank you
Stumbling into the garden
Where the juneberry's flowers had burst open
Like the bells of french horns
The lily my mother and I planted oozed into the air
The bazillion ants labored in their earthen workshops below
The collard greens waved in the wind like the sails of ships
And the wasps swam in the mint bloom's viscous swill

And you, again you
For hanging tight, dear friend
I know I can be long-winded sometimes
I want so badly to rub the sponge of gratitude over every last thing
Including you, which, yes, it's awkward
The suds in your ear and armpit
The little sparkling gems slipping into your eye
Soon it will be over

Which is precisely what the child in my dream said
Holding my hand, pointing at the roiling sea and the sky
Hurtling our way like so many buffalo
Who said "It's much worse than we think"
"And sooner"
To whom I said
"No duh child in my dreams"
"What do you think this singing and shuddering is"
"What this screaming and reaching and dancing and crying is"
"Other than loving what every second goes away?"
Goodbye, I mean to say
And thank you
Every day