Relevant Birds - Cont' --- Day 3/194

Walk: Union Square, Fillmore Street, Mindful Body
Distance: 3 miles and take yoga class

70. POEM IN THANKS - Thomas Lux

.
Lord Whoever, thank you for this air
I'm about to in- and exhale, this hutch
in the woods, the wood for fire,
the light–––both lamp and the natural stuff
of leaf-black fern, and wing.
For the piano, the shovel
for ashes, the moth-gnawed
blankets, the stone-cold water
stone-cold: thank you.
Thank you, Lord, coming for
to carry me here–––where I'll gnash
it out, Lord, where I'll calm
and work, Lord, thank you
for the goddamn birds singing!

Ciwt was startled by a new to her poet named Thomas Lux.  Maybe you've heard of him.  He has taught at several colleges - particularly Sarah Lawrence for 20 over years - and has been the recipient of a slew of awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship.

The Poetry Foundation tells us this of him:  Lux has been praised for his poetry, but as he told Elizabeth Mehren in the Los Angeles Times, "This is not something one chooses to do…It is something I was drawn to. I do it because I love to do it, and because I don't have any choice. If I don't write, I feel empty and lost." He added, "Poetry exists because there is no other way to say the things that get said in good poems except in poems. There is something about the right combination of metaphor or image connected to the business of being alive that only poems can do. To me, it makes me feel more alive, reading good poetry."

To that last Ciwt sings out a g--d---- YeSS!