yes, let’s say thank you

thank you, big tears for a small reason

thank you for unprompted morning reading on the dark couch

thank you for the coffee I am slow to make and quick to drink

thank you to my children for treating me like a good friend

while I cried today

first thing in the morning

thank you for surprises

thank you for many blankets

for information delivered softly and with care

for the way the sun came right in today

for my new green hat

thank you petals falling like snow

outside outside outside

thank you sun, again (really, I can’t thank you enough)

thank you thank you, wild women in my house

wild man asking me pay attention

thank you

for the stacking up of moments that make a day

better than the one that came before

thank you, pain in my jaw on my right side

that reminds me that the pain always lives somewhere

oh yes it’s never really gone

thank you

for the clear noodles

the broth and the leftover short ribs

and the last of the kimchi

last of the seaweed

last of the furikake

the last black sesame seeds

use it up use it all up

thank you for a bath with almost no screaming (and no crying!)

which is a good place to end

except the coda of the circus book

and the other shorter book

the one I would read to the bath mermaids

who now, in turn, read it to me easily

and I get to listen and hear it

instead of sending it out

thank you, the book that ends in this way:

Hope and peace and love and trust,

all the world is all of us.