August 31st, 2011
The letter this week is the auGust G
G is for Gratitude
Here is a litany of gratitude written by Anne Porter, poet, born in 1911
In Publishers Weekly David Shapiro observed that 'Porter writes what might best be called plainsong: short, unadorned works that, like gospel or folk music, cut directly to the ambiguous heart of things."
A List of Praises
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by
Anne Porter
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"Give praise with psalms
that tell the trees to sing,
Give praise with Gospel
choirs in storefront churches,
Mad with the joy of the
Sabbath,
Give praise with the
babble of infants, who wake with the sun,
Give praise with
children chanting their skip-rope rhymes,
A poetry not in books,
a vagrant mischievous poetry
living wild on the
Streets through generations of children.
Give praise with the
sound of the milk-train far away
With its mutter of
wheels and long-drawn-out sweet whistle
As it speeds through
the fields of sleep at three in the morning,
Give praise with the
immense and peaceful sigh
Of the wind in the
pinewoods,
At night give praise
with starry silences.
Give praise with the
skirling of seagulls
And the rattle and flap
of sails
And gongs of buoys
rocked by the sea-swell
Out in the
shipping-lanes beyond the harbor.
Give praise with the
humpback whales,
Huge in the ocean they
sing to one another.
Give praise with the
rasp and sizzle of crickets, katydids and cicadas,
Give praise with hum of
bees,
Give praise with the
little peepers who live near water.
When they fill the
marsh with a shimmer of bell-like cries
We know that the winter
is over.
Give praise with
mockingbirds, day's nightingales.
Hour by hour they sing
in the crepe myrtle
And glossy tulip trees
On quiet side streets
in southern towns.
Give praise with the
rippling speech
Of the eider-duck and
her ducklings
As they paddle their
way downstream
In the red-gold morning
On Restiguche, their
cold river,
Salmon river,
Wilderness river.
Give praise with the
whitethroat sparrow.
Far, far from the
cities,
Far even from the
towns,
With piercing innocence
He sings in the
spruce-tree tops,
Always four notes
And four notes only.
Give praise with water,
With storms of rain and
thunder
And the small rains
that sparkle as they dry,
And the faint floating
ocean roar
That fills the seaside
villages,
And the clear brooks
that travel down the mountains
And with this poem, a
leaf on the vast flood,
And with the angels in
that other country."
I follow a friend on Facebook, and each day she lists five things she is grateful for.
What a lovely habit, and one I think we should all cultivate.
Visit here at ABC Wednesday for a wonderful variety
based on the letter G.
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